Police-trained experts who reviewed videos released Friday of the fatal beating of Tire Nichols in Memphis said they believed there was no justification for the actions of the police officers involved, who have been charged with crimes including second-degree murder at his death.
The footage, which spans nearly an hour from both police and street cameras, shows officers beating, kicking and using a baton for Mr Nichols after he fled a traffic check.
“In my career, I’ve never seen — I mean, you see it in movies — but I’ve never seen a person deliberately prop up to be beaten,” said Ed Obayashi, a police training expert and attorney who conducts force-use investigations for state law enforcement across the country.
“To me, that’s worse than Rodney King,” added Mr. Obayashi, who is also a deputy sheriff and policy adviser in California’s Plumas County Sheriff’s Office.
During police training, officers are repeatedly stressed to be aware of their physical surroundings, Mr Obayashi said, but the same emphasis should be placed on being aware of their own emotions. When officers’ tempers run high, he said, they are bound to make mistakes.
At the Nichols confrontation, it’s possible that the officers felt disrespected when their directions were not followed, he said.
“This seems to be a case of classic contempt for the cop,” he said, “that they catch up with him later and get revenge on the poor person.”
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization of current and former law enforcement officers that studies improving policing, said the officers’ behavior was flawed in other ways as well.
In modern policing, officers are usually trained to communicate clearly with an individual and respond proportionately to their actions, he said. These officers did neither, he said.
The beating is “the very definition of excessive force,” Mr Wexler said. According to him, Mr. Nichols posed no threat befitting the violence used by the officers, except that he appeared not to want to be arrested.
Even when Mr. Nichols was on the ground, none of the officers tried to help him, which Mr. Wexler said was a breach of their duty to render assistance.
“This person was not treated like a human being,” he said.