Of all the words used before we prepared, nothing spoke louder than pictures.
that the pictures were captured on police body cameras made it even scarier – a murderer’s point of view, as the indictment demands.
The video footage is as shocking as it is haunting.
having stopped Nichols tire in his car, the Memphis police instantly escalate into extreme violence.
Tyr is the only man featured in the film seemingly trying to calm things down.
Unfortunately, inevitably, it is beyond his control.
It’s hard to see him struggling on the ground, screaming at his mother in last words that would never speak.
Tyr receives no treatment until an ambulance arrives after more than 20 minutes.
We watch him for more than 20 minutes while he is propped up, handcuffed, against a vehicle, obviously in distress.
As his condition deteriorates, he collapses on the ground.
He’s a dying man, and yet everyone around him seems to sit idly by and do nothing.
The officers who inflicted the fatal injuries share a debrief, punching each other.
You can hear the adrenaline.
It’s a sickening indictment of police as it happened that night in Memphis.
Lawyers for Tyre’s family say it reflects a police culture steeped in racism and abuse of power – it doesn’t matter if the officers involved are black, they say, because the problem lies in a learned expectation of immunity and of impunity that pervades the police.
The same lawyers praise the speed and seriousness of the charges brought against the officers involved.
They see progress and say this should be a model for similar cases in the future – now they are gaining sympathy and support from the violent and very public death of a much-loved young man in Memphis.
