Police, NAACP react to video of Memphis police beating

Feb. 1—The beating death of a Black man in Memphis, Tennessee by members of the city's police department was "eerily reminiscent" of the videotaped beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles officers in 1991, the head of the local chapter of the NAACP said Wednesday evening.

The death of Tyre Nichols is attributable to "a broken policing system, poisonous at the root, that permeates cities and communities across the country," Willie Mahone, president of the Frederick County chapter of the NAACP, said Wednesday evening during a rally at the Baker Park bandshell in Frederick.

Nichols, 29, died three days after being beaten by officers following a traffic stop. Five Memphis officers face charges, including second-degree murder, in his death.

"I looked at this and right away I saw Rodney King," Mahone said.

King was a Black motorist whose beating by white Los Angeles Police Department officers in 1991 was famously captured on videotape.

Mahone's comments came the same night that Frederick Police Chief Jason Lando and some of his top staff met with members of the community to discuss the video of Nichols' beating.

Lando said he knew he had to convene a meeting of his Chief's Community Advisory Board when he saw the Nichols video.

The board consists of about 50 members of the community who meet several times a year.

The board can also meet if there's a critical incident involving the department or a situation elsewhere that Lando feels needs to be addressed.

The two-hour session in a theater at Frederick Community College yielded difficult questions, Lando said afterward, but he felt it was a productive, positive discussion.

Questions ranged from officers' use of body cameras to how they're trained to interact with the city's deaf residents and how to deal with a sometimes confrontational police culture that can create an "us versus them" mentality, as one speaker put it.

"What happened in Memphis, it wasn't even close to police work," Lando told the audience. "That was just brutality."

Officers are responsible for someone's welfare throughout the process of an arrest, and are trained in emergency medical care to try to help people in dangerous situations, said Lt. John Corbett.

He was also critical of the actions of the officers in the Nichols beating.

"I saw nothing that even resembled police work as I know it," Corbett said.

Frederick officers are trained to try to de-escalate a situation after the use of force, said Lt. Kevin Meyer.

"Obviously, what we saw in the video [from Memphis] was well beyond what our use of force would allow," he said.

At the NAACP event Wednesday, Mahone called for broader community representation on Frederick County's police accountability board, and for the board to be given the power to perform initial investigations of charges of police misconduct rather than relying on internal police investigations.

He also called for funding for summer jobs opportunities for young people, among other local and statewide actions.