Why Did Other Cops Fail To Stop the Lethal Assault on Tyre Nichols?

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2 years ago

February 1, 2023

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The Memphis, Tennessee, police officers who lethally beat, pepper-sprayed, and tased Tyre Nichols after a January 7 traffic stop were clearly out of control, delivering punishment for what they perceived as “contempt of cop” in the guise of making an arrest. Yet during the 13 minutes that elapsed between the stop and the police radio report that Nichols had been taken into custody, no one else who was present intervened to stop the blatantly illegal use of force.

That sort of failure is familiar from other notorious cases of police abuse, including the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Even when officers recognize that a colleague is using excessive force, they do not necessarily act on that knowledge. Given the strong social and institutional pressures against second-guessing a fellow officer, that problem cannot easily be remedied through legal reforms. But there is reason to think that training in “active bystandership,” which builds on psychological research that illuminates the barriers to intervention in situations like these, can make a difference.

Nichols ostensibly was pulled over for reckless driving, although Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis says she has not seen any evidence to support that charge aside from one officer’s statement. Davis fired the officers directly involved in what she called the “heinous, reckless and inhumane” treatment of NicholsTadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smithon January 20, about a week and a half after Nichols died from his injuries. Last Friday, they were charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official oppression, and official misconduct. But the responsibility for Nichols’ death goes beyond what these five officers did; it extends to what other people at the scene failed to do.

Video released by the Memphis Police Department (MPD) on Friday evening shows other officers milling about as Bean et al. pummel Nichols, kick him, and strike him with a police baton. “The available footage does not show any sign that the officers present intervened to stop the aggressive use of force,” The New York Times notes. “If anything, it shows the contrary. At one point, footage captured an officer saying ‘I hope they stomp his ass’ after Mr. Nichols’s attempt to flee the scene.”

After viewing the body and pole camera recordings on Friday, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. said he had “concerns about two deputies who appeared on the scene following the physical confrontation between police and Tyre Nichols.” Bonner said he had “launched an internal investigation into the conduct of these deputies to determine what occurred and if any policies were violated.” The deputies “have been relieved of duty pending the outcome of this administrative investigation.”

Although Bonner said the conduct that bothered him occurred “following the physical confrontation,” the video shows a squad car from his office arriving after Nichols, who at that point had been tackled, tased, and pepper-sprayed, fled police. That suggests deputies were present during the vicious beating that Nichols received after the cops caught up with him. Body camera video also shows at least eight MPD officers at the scene of the initial confrontation before the second assault.

Last week, Davis said the internal investigation prompted by the deadly traffic stop was not limited to the officers “directly responsible for the physical abuse of Mr. Nichols.” She said it includes an unspecified number of “other MPD officers” who “are still under investigation for department policy violations.”

Davis did not say exactly which “department policy violations” she had in mind. But the MPD’s policy manual includes an admonition that “any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene.” It adds that “a member shall immediately report to the Department any violation of policies and regulations or any other improper conduct which is contrary to the policy, order or directives of the Department.”

Disregarding that duty can be a criminal offense as well as a policy violation. Official misconduct, one of the charges against Bean et al., occurs not only when a “public servant” does something that exceeds his legal authority but also when he “refrains from performing a duty that is imposed by law or that is clearly inherent in the nature of the public servant’s office or employment.”

Discipline or prosecution, of course, happens only after an officer fails to intervene. What can be done to increase the likelihood that an officer will do what he is supposed to do when he sees a colleague “engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject”?

Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE), a training program that was established in 2021 and so far involves more than 300 law enforcement agencies, offers one potential answer. ABLE, which was developed by Georgetown University’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety, grew out of a New Orleans program known as EPIC (Ethical Policing Is Courageous) that was launched in 2014 under the guidance of Ervin Staub, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. It is based on insightsgained fromresearchinto why people either intervene or fail to intervene in emergency situations. The obstacles to intervention include deference to authority, diffusion of responsibility, and fear of retaliation and ostracism.

Jonathan Aronie, a partner at the law firm Sheppard Mullin, which sponsors ABLE, co-founded the program and chairs its board of advisers. He says ABLE, which includes a weeklong certification program for officers who conduct eight hours of training for their colleagues, is based on principles that have proven effective for hospitals and airlines seeking to prevent surgical and pilot error. The challenge in those contexts is similar to the one exemplified by police officers who fail to question the use of excessive force: overcoming the natural tendency to go along rather than risk negative consequences by challenging the judgment of colleagues and superiors.

ABLE, which demands explicit and conspicuous buy-in from police executives, local politicians, and community groups, strives to create a culture that reinforces the duty to intervene. The program, which is free to police departments thanks to support from Sheppard Mullin and several corporate donors, uses case studies and role-playing scenarios to identify and overcome barriers to intervention.

Does it work? “It is difficult to quantify the success of active bystandership training,” ABLE concedes, “because, in most cases, when it works, nothing news-worthy happens.” But the organization cites research in other fields that “confirms the skills necessary to intervene successfully can be taught and learned.” It says “extensive field experiments” by Staub and other researchers have shown that “the inhibitors to an intervention can be overcome even in hierarchical, high group-cohesion environments, like policing.” ABLE also cites testimonials from officers who have participated in the program and says it is conducting surveys and collecting policing data that could provide more rigorous and specific evidence.

So far, ABLE’s listof participating agencies includes the Knoxville Police Department but not the MPD or any other law enforcement agency in Tennessee. As the MPD’s code of conduct illustrates, police already theoretically know they are not supposed to tolerate illegal conduct by fellow officers. But the brief, pro forma instruction they receive on that point during standard training is plainly no match for the countervailing pressures they encounter on the job. Additional training that focuses specifically on the skills needed to resist those pressures seems like a promising approach that agencies such as the MPD should consider if they are serious about preventing horrifying incidents like the one that killed Tyre Nichols.

Business

UK-US pact neither a free-trade agreement nor broad trade deal of Brexiteer dreams

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29 mins ago

May 9, 2025

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UK-US pact neither a free-trade agreement nor broad trade deal of Brexiteer dreams

Sir Keir Starmer was at home in Downing Street, watching Arsenal lose in the Champions League, when he got a call from Donald Trump that he thought presented the chance to snatch victory from the jaws of trading defeat.

The president’s call was a characteristic last-minute flex intended to squeeze a little more out of the prime minister.

It was enough to persuade Sir Keir and his business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, dining with industry bosses across London at Mansion House, that they had to seize the opportunity.

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The result, hurriedly announced via presidential conference call, is not the broad trade deal of Brexiteer dreams, and is certainly not a free-trade agreement.

It’s a narrow agreement that secures immediate relief for a handful of sectors most threatened by Mr Trump’s swingeing tariffs, with a promise of a broader renegotiation of “reciprocal” 10% tariffs to come.

Most pressing was the car industry, which Mr Reynolds said was facing imminent announcements of “very difficult news” at Britain’s biggest brands, including Jaguar Land Rover, which sounds like code for redundancies.

In place of the 25% tariffs imposed last month, a 10% tariff will apply to a quota of 100,000 vehicles a year, less than the 111,000 exported to the US in 2024, but close enough for a deal.

It still leaves the car sector far worse off than it was before “liberation day”, but, with one in four exports crossing the Atlantic, ministers reason it’s better than no deal, and crucially offers more favourable terms than any major US trading partner can claim.

For steel and aluminium zero tariffs were secured, along with what sounds like a commitment to work with the US to prevent Chinese dumping. That is a clear win and fundamental for the ailing industries in Britain, though modest in broad terms, with US exports worth only around £400m a year.

In exchange, the UK has had to open up access to food and agricultural products, starting with beef and ethanol, used for fuel and food production.

In place of tariff quotas on beef that applied on either side (12% in the UK and 20% in America) 13,000 tonnes of beef can flow tariff-free in either direction, around 1.5% of the UK market.

The biggest wins

Crucially, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) production standards that apply to food and animal products, and prevent the sale of hormone-treated meat, will remain. Mr Trump even suggested the US was moving towards “no chemical” European standards.

This may be among the biggest wins, as it leaves open the prospect of an easing of SPS checks on trade with the European Union, a valuable reduction in red tape that is the UK’s priority in reset negotiations with Brussels.

Farmers also believe the US offers an opportunity for their high-quality, grass-fed beef, though there is concern that the near-doubling of ethanol quotas is a threat to domestic production.

Technology deals to come?

There were broad commitments to do deals on technology, AI and an “economic security blanket”, and much hope rests on the US’s promise of “preferential terms” when it comes to pharmaceuticals and other sectors.

There was no mention of proposed film tariffs, still unclear even in the Oval Office.

Taken together, officials describe these moves as “banking sectoral wins” while they continue to try and negotiate down the remaining tariffs.

The challenge from here is that Mr Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff is not reciprocal at all. As commerce secretary Howard Lutnick proudly pointed out in the Oval Office, tariffs on US trade have fallen to less than 2%, while the UK’s have risen to 10%.

As a consequence, UK exporters remain in a materially worse position than they were at the start of April, though better than it was before the president’s call, and for now, several British industries have secured concessions that no other country can claim.

From a protectionist, capricious president, this might well be the best deal on offer.

Quite what incentive Mr Trump will have to renegotiate the blanket tariff, and what the UK has left to give up by way of compromise, remains to be seen. Sir Keir will hope that, unlike the vanquished Arsenal, he can turn it round in the second leg.

World

Why Ukraine’s European allies will be nervously watching VE Day events in Red Square

Published

29 mins ago

May 9, 2025

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Why Ukraine's European allies will be nervously watching VE Day events in Red Square

Donald Trump has a soft spot for military spectacles and autocrats.

He will be looking on with envy as Vladimir Putin parades both in Moscow today, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping flying in to join Victory Day events in Red Square.

European allies of Ukraine will be watching nervously, wary of anything that could upturn the delicate quest for peace.

President Trump‘s patience with peddling his much vaunted “peace deal” has been wearing thin and allies had feared Ukraine could be punished for it.

That would have been grotesquely unfair, of course. Ukraine has bent over backwards to accommodate Mr Trump’s one-sided diplomacy that has so far seemed to favour the aggressor in this obscene war.

True, the Trump proposal does not agree to Russian annexation of all the land already taken by force and stops short of ordering the complete demilitarisation of Ukraine, but otherwise the proposals are pretty much everything that Moscow has asked for.

The deal is being pushed by Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s golf partner turned chief negotiator, a man regarded by diplomats as out of his depth and lost in the rough when it comes to the arts of statecraft.

Like his president, Mr Witkoff has a history of doing business with Russian oligarchs, an apparently starry-eyed view of the Russian leader and has called Ukraine a “false country”.

Moment of truth approaching

Mr Witkoff and Mr Trump have so far given Mr Putin the benefit of the doubt, but a moment of truth is approaching. While Ukraine has agreed to a longer ceasefire in principle, Mr Putin will not.

Ukraine’s European allies feared that Mr Trump was about to despair of progress, blame Ukraine and take US military support with him.

Then came the minerals agreement between the US and Ukraine. The breakthrough gave the US president something to show for his efforts and assuaged his desire for some kind of deal. He seems to have moved on for now, at least, and approved the first $50m of arms sales to Ukraine.

But these remain a tense few days ahead with plenty at stake.

Mr Putin’s self-declared three-day ceasefire raises the spectre paradoxically of escalation if either side breaks it.

The Russian lull is seen here in Kyiv as little more than a ploy.

If the Russian leader was serious about giving peace a chance, they say, he would have signed up to the permanent ceasefire being proposed by the Trump team.

Besides, Russia broke the last truce in Easter as soon as it had begun and used it to carry out surveillance and reinforcement operations says Kyiv. Why risk another pointless pause that is exploited by the invaders?

Escalation possible

If Russia plays the same games this time and Ukraine retaliates, there could be a significant escalation. Likewise, with any Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow during Victory Day.

Any major flare-up will not be looked on favourably by the US president if it upstages his first trip abroad this presidency, a three-day tour of the Middle East.

For now, his attention is not so much on the Ukraine conflict and he is no longer issuing threats to walk away and stop supporting the Ukrainians.

That will be a relief here in the Ukrainian capital. They would be unwise to do anything to reengage him, for now at least.

Their European allies, though, know American involvement in this war appears to be receding.

Can they fill the vacuum?

This week, they remember the sacrifices made to bring peace and security to their continent 80 years ago.

Can they find the political will and unity to do so again, even without America?

Astonishingly, given all we have been through, that is still an open question.

World

India will respond ‘in exactly the same light’ if Pakistan retaliates, high commissioner tells Sky News

Published

29 mins ago

May 9, 2025

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India will respond 'in exactly the same light' if Pakistan retaliates, high commissioner tells Sky News

India will respond to any escalation from Pakistan “proportionally and in exactly the same light”, the country’s high commissioner has told Sky News.

Weeks after 26 tourists were shot dead by gunmen in Indian-controlled Kashmir last month, India carried out missile strikes in Pakistan and Islamabad-administered parts of the disputed region.

On Wednesday, India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites, while Pakistan said it was not involved in the April attack and the sites were not militant bases.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has since vowed that India will “now have to pay the price” for their “blatant mistake,” and skirmishes have also been reported along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

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Speaking to Sky’s The World with Yalda Hakim on Thursday, India’s high commissioner to the UK, Vikram Doraiswami, said “the original escalation is Pakistan’s sponsored terror groups’ attack on civilians”.

India strikes ‘reasonable,’ says high commissioner

He then insisted India’s strikes in Pakistan and Kashmir were “precise, targeted, reasonable and moderate,” adding: “It was focused principally and solely on terrorist infrastructure.

“We made it abundantly clear that the object of this exercise was clearly to avoid military escalation.

“A fact that was actually acknowledged – in a left-handed way of course – by the Pakistani side in terms of their own statements, which said the airspace hadn’t been violated.”

Pakistan chose ‘to escalate the matter’

The high commissioner also said about claims Pakistan shot down Indian aircraft with Chinese-made fighter jets: “If it satisfies Pakistan’s ego to say that they’ve done something, they could have used that as an off-ramp to move on.

“Clearly they’ve chosen not to, and they’ve chosen to escalate the matter.”

And when asked about Pakistan’s threats of retaliation, Mr Doraiswami said: “We’re not looking for an escalation, but if Pakistan responds, as we have done, we will respond proportionally and in exactly the same light.”

He then referenced the border skirmishes, saying: “I do want to remind everybody: For the last 15 days, they’ve also opened artillery fire along the Line of Actual Control… That’s led to civilian casualties.”

It comes after India said Pakistan attacked its military stations in the Kashmir region with drones and missiles on Thursday.

The country’s defence ministry said stations at Jammu, Pathankot and Udhampur were “targeted by Pakistani-origin” weapons, and added “the threats were swiftly neutralised”.