Former Police Captain Asks On MSNBC Whether Tyre Nichols Video Could Be Part of Trend: ‘Is This Something They Do Nightly?’
A former police captain reacted on MSNBC to footage of a confrontation between Tyre Nichols and former Memphis police officers by asking whether the behavior is something these officers exhibited “nightly.”
Nicholas died days after being pulled over for alleged reckless driving earlier this month. Body camera footage from the incident sparked massive outrage, with activists on both sides of the political aisle condemning the behavior of the now-former officers. The five former Memphis cops in question are being charged with the murder of Nichols and were fired.
Appearing with MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian, Sonia Pruitt, formerly police captain for Montgomery County, Maryland and past chair of the National Black Police Association, said there are points in the video where the actions being seen do not match the words being said by officers.
Vossoughian asked whether the officers were trying to make an “audio defense,” noting at one point that officers ask for Nichols to give up his hands when they are holding his hands.
“If you take that one little piece, I would say I’m not sure because in the excitement of things, what they might have been trying to say is, ‘put your hands behind your back.’ Instead they said, ‘show me your hands,’ but words are important,” Pruitt said.
More concerning for her was a moment in the video when a dispatcher asked for charges and no one responded. Pruitt said the pressing question should be whether these officers ignored procedure every night and acted without consequence before Nichols. She also questioned the alleged reckless driving being the reason for the stop.
“It made me wonder, is this typical? Is this something that this unit does all of the time? No one can even explain why he was stopped,” she said. “We hear reckless driving, but the chief says we don’t have any evidence that there was reckless driving. So is this a trend of some sort? Is this something that they do nightly? That is my question.”
