I only catch the BBC Radio 4 Today programme briefly each day. I listen to a few minutes while shaving. It is really all that I can stand. On Friday morning we were treated to the ghastly story of the death, at police hands, of Tyre Nichols. It more than appears (it was all caught on camera) that this entirely innocent and peaceful young man was pulled over by four Memphis police officers from the city’s SCORPION police unit, administered a severe beating for several minutes and died as a result three days later. Moreover, presumably under the impression that what they were doing was justified or would be ignored by their superiors, they filmed the whole hour long incident on their body cameras. It is not outside the bounds of possibility that at least one of the police officers, aided and abetted by Big Pharma, could pay the ultimate penalty. Tennessee maintains the death penalty and, while only initially charged with second degree murder, federal charges demanding the death penalty may be brought later.
I must give the benefit of the doubt to the BBC as I may have missed the full identification in terms of skin colour of the assailants. But we were reminded several times about the skin colour, black, of the victim. I find these things hard to stomach and did not delve further until I saw the The Sunday Times this weekend. Turns out the perpetrators were also black. To be fair, this fact was reported in The Guardian and the poor boy’s mother is reported on Sky News as saying she ‘hated that it was five black men’ who killed her boy. A CBS News reporter questioned ‘How many times, and in how many ways, have we seen police officers taking Black life in this country? I’ve lost count.’ President Joe Biden, incisive as ever, said the killing was: ‘yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day.’ The elephant of colour (of the police) lurking in the corner of the room was blissfully ignored.
It has not taken long for parallels to be drawn with the death at police hands—White police hands—of George Floyd. The Huffington Post obliges with a piece warning the UK that it ought to pay attention to the death of Tyre Nichols. Referring to Floyd’s death it says: ‘The horrific incident shone a light on Western societies in particular to make people more aware of their own unconscious bias, be mindful of micro-aggressions and racism in general towards people of colour.’
Digging an even deeper hole for themselves, the article continues with a quote from some campaigner who claims: ‘The police have, through their institutionally racist practices, lost all credibility and legitimacy when it comes to black communities in the UK, particularly in London.’ Again, while this may be true and a matter of concern, the logic of linking this to the death of Tyre Nichols evades me. I looked in vain for any mention of the fact that the people who killed him were black. It seems that political capital can be manufactured by conveniently ignoring a major fact in this dreadful story.
There are few, if any parallels, to be drawn here between the deaths of George Floyd and Tyre Nichols. The only parallels are that neither of them deserved to die and they were both killed by the police. However, George Floyd was a known criminal, a drug user and dealer who had held a knife to his pregnant girlfriend’s stomach, presumably threatening the kill both her and the baby. Floyd was legitimately stopped by police after being accused of paying for goods with counterfeit money. This did not, of course, justify his protracted and brutal death.
Tyre Nichols was stopped for reckless driving which, if true, was justified. He was arrested without resisting but later bolted; not the wisest decision but he may have known something about these police officers or overheard something that made him decide that a bolt for home—100 yards away—would be safer than having summary justice meted out on the spot. The police apprehended him again and ‘justice’ was duly administered. However, Tyre Nichols had no criminal record, he was from a loving family, he was a skateboarder who liked to photograph sunsets. He was nothing like George Floyd.
Both police and criminals are killed by gunshot in the USA annually. Each year, over 1000 people are shot by police and last year 60 police officers were killed. Much to the surprise of many, the number of white people killed by police exceeds that of black people; the raw statistics for 2022 are: ‘ 313 Black people were killed by the police in the United States only in that year. This compares to 216 Hispanics, 17 Native Americans, and 502 White people.’ However, black people are disproportionately represented among these deaths, but the reason for this is that they are disproportionately involved in crime. That is an uncomfortable and, undoubtedly, unpalatable fact and the debate over the reasons for this is long and divisive. However, those are the bare facts and research has shown that: ‘black police were more likely to kill black civilians than white civilians.’ Again, there are plausible explanations, confounding factors and covariates to be taken into account. But any attempt to place the death of black criminals (and some innocents who are killed in error) at the feet of white policemen is facile. It is important to consider these facts because the events around the death of Tyre Nichols are being politicised and ‘racialised’ and could have long-lasting and damaging consequences.
While it may be in poor taste to make political capital or even a point out of the death of Tyre Nichols, it strikes me that this represents the worst kind of racial equality – showing that Black policemen can be equally as brutal as White policemen. And, while it is not fair to throw the words of a distressed mother back at her it is fair to question the selective reporting of her words. Why report that she ‘hated that it was five black men’? Is this not an indication that the media are, however subliminally, disappointed that it was five black men who killed another black man? How much more convenient it would have been if these had been White police officers. Then the media could have ‘let rip’, sloganising about how ‘black lives matter’ and giving the protests in Memphis and elsewhere the publicity they deserve.
It must be shocking for the black community of Memphis that five of their own, albeit in police uniforms, have killed an innocent young black man. On face value, this appears to have been simply for the hell of it. The protests have been about the police and, indeed, the SCORPION unit has already been disbanded. But we can bet our bottom dollars that we will hear nothing about ‘black brutality’ or anything about the background of these men which relates to their crime. We can be sure that somewhere, right now, a left-wing liberal sociologist will be heavily engaged in sophistical gymnastics trying to prove that the death of Tyre Nichols was a result of white privilege and institutional racism.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
