The five policemen were fired, accused of murder and arrested. Four of them were later released on bail.
While expressing horror, the family said Friday they were “satisfied” with the charges brought against the five officers and praised the “quick” action against them.
Despite the words of Nichols’ family, “if the verdict is wrong, the protests will be bigger,” Demarcus Carter, a 36-year-old African-American from Memphis, predicted after viewing the video.
“It could have been me” instead of Tire Nichols, he added.
This new death after an arrest revived the debate on police brutality in the United States, where the memory of George Floyd, murdered in 2020 by a white police officer, is still present, a case that led to a social crisis.
Ben Crump, one of the Nichols family lawyers, blamed “institutionalized police culture.”
“It doesn’t matter if the agent is black, Hispanic or white (…). There are unwritten rules according to which, if a person belongs to a certain ethnic group, they can be treated with excessive force,” he said Saturday on MSNBC .
“This is the culture that killed Tire Nichols,” he added.
With information from AFP
