‘It was heart wrenching ‘: Cobb County law officials react to video of Tyre Nichols beating

Hours before the video of brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was released, every law enforcement agency in Cobb County denounced police brutality.

Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell spoke with police chiefs at the Cobb County police department and in Austell, both reacting to the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols..

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They experienced similar emotions as they watched the body cam footage, but they both told Newell when they initially saw the video, they viewed it through the eyes of a father, because they both have children.

“It was heart wrenching for me. It was heart wrenching for my wife and it was very disturbing as a human being. As a father. As a husband,” Cobb County Chief Stuart Vanhozer said.

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Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens denounced police brutality hours before the video was released, as he stood alongside law enforcement agencies and community leaders in Cobb County on Friday.

“We have not seen similar things like that in Cobb County but what are some lessons learned that we can take from this video and from this event as we have done others,” Chief Vanhoozer said. “Good police officers get more upset about a video like this than most of the public because not only are they Doing something that’s disturbing but they are also tarnishing the reputation of every good police officer in America when they do it.”

Chief Hamilton has been over the Austell Police Department for six months and has been updating policies.

“We are literally in the process now of updating all of our policies and the first ones was our high critical areas like use of force. We’ve been reviewing those over the last several weeks,” Chief Hamilton said. “I literally just hired a lady that’s going to be over our accreditation process that we are doing here in the city Austell.”

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