Memphis City Council chairman gets emotional over Nichols video, recounts being stopped by police

Memphis City Council Chairman Martavius Jones, who is Black, says he was overcome with emotion after seeing the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police.

In a viral interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, Jones broke down on air when asked about the Nichols video. He told Yahoo News that he was emotional because he experienced a frightening encounter with law enforcement decades ago.

“I had an incident where I was pulled over and I was looking down the barrel of a .357 [Magnum] when I was a teenager,” he told Yahoo News.

Jones says it happened nearly 37 years ago while he was in college, but that he still remembers the life-and-death situation he was faced with.

“So being pulled over, under false pretenses by law enforcement, could have easily turned sideways. And it could have been dire consequences for me or people that I know,” he said.

Memphis City Council Chairman Martavius Jones.
Memphis City Council Chairman Martavius Jones. (Via Yahoo News Video)

Jones and his colleagues saw the video of Nichols’s arrest on Friday afternoon, hours before it was released by the Memphis Police Department.

“As I’m sitting, viewing it, I’m in disbelief that this is happening,” he said.

But it was during the second viewing that the video really sank in. “The first time was really just an observation. But it wasn’t until I had a chance to view it again and really sit down and digest it and see the suffering” that Nichols endured, Jones said. “It was tough emotionally to deal with. You just have to think that if he would have been rendered care more immediately, he may still be here.”

Watching the video was even more emotional for Jones, who has a son, because he’s raising a young Black boy in America.

Memphis Police Department officOfficers stand near Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7 in this image from video released by the Memphis Police Department. ers stand near Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who was pulled over while driving, beaten and died three days later, on January 7, 2023, in this still image from video released by Memphis Police Department on January 27, 2023. (Memphis Police Department/Handout via Reuters)
Officers stand near Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7 in this image from video released by the Memphis Police Department. (Handout via Reuters)

A 2019 study from the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and Washington University found that the sixth leading cause of death for young men of color is the use of force by police. The numbers show that Black men are killed by police two and a half times more than white men.

“It was the fact that I’m a father. I have friends who have sons,” Jones said. “Not that we were immune to anything, but this wasn’t supposed to happen in our community. This was a traffic stop, it wasn’t supposed to end like this,” he said during the interview with CNN on Jan. 27.

This year marks Jones’s last year in office, and he says he plans to use that time to build a better Memphis for Tyre Nichols.

Tyre Nichols.
Tyre Nichols. (Courtesy of the Nichols family via AP)

“We have to let his legacy — his sacrifice, the sacrifice that his mother will not have her son anymore — we cannot let this go unaddressed. So I hope that, well I’m sure, that my colleagues will stand with me. We’re gonna have to have some tough conversations,” Jones told CNN.

At an upcoming series of town hall meetings, he hopes to facilitate conversations between law enforcement and the community to help restore faith and trust.

“I don’t think that you need to be a law enforcement expert — there could be great ideas that citizens have in order to improve the Memphis Police Department, and I’m open to having those conversations,” he said.