CNN —
After five Memphis Police officers left a handcuffed and brutally beaten Tyre Nichols slumped against a patrol car last month, one officer took cell phone photos of the visibly injured 29-year-old Black man and texted one to at least six people, newly revealed internal police department documents show.
Demetrius Haley – one of five officers fired and charged with murder in the Nichols’ case – texted one of the two photos he took to two other Memphis officers and a “female acquaintance,” among others, the newly revealed documents published online by CNN affiliate WMC show.
The photos are among a slew of misconduct and policy violations allegedly committed by the officers who encountered Nichols and detailed in the documents, including making false or inconsistent statements about the arrest and bragging about the deadly beating afterward.
The offenses are laid out in five decertification request letters – one for each officer – sent by the police department last month to a state commission that enforces policing standards. If their decertification is granted, they would be unable to work for other state law enforcement agencies.
Nichols is described in the letters as a nonviolent, unarmed subject who posed no significant threat to the officers. A sixth officer has also been fired but not criminally charged.
CNN reached out to the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission to request the documents, as well as the Memphis Police Department for comment.
All five officers were also internally charged with violating the department’s policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, excessive or unnecessary force and use of body-worn cameras, the letters show. Some were also charged with additional violations.
The charges are not criminal in nature.
The revelations come as the Memphis city attorney announced Tuesday that seven more officers are expected to face administrative discipline related to the case – which is one of the most recent examples of the nationwide scrutiny of police use of force against people of color, particularly Black Americans.
The Memphis City Council also approved several public safety reforms in a meeting Tuesday night, the first since agonizing video of Nichols’ beating was released.
The council votes happened as Nichols’ family was entering the House of Representatives chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, as invited guests of first lady Jill Biden to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Biden addressed the need for police accountability in his speech.
Here are the key takeaways from the internal department letters.
All five of the officers criminally charged – Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, Desmond Mills Jr. and Haley – either never turned on their body-worn cameras or only recorded snippets of their encounter with Nichols, which is a violation of the department’s policies, the letters say.
Memphis police policy requires officers to activate their body-worn cameras before entering the scene of any dispatch call and keep recording until the encounter is over, according to the documents. If their camera was not started before arriving at the scene, they should activate it “as soon as reasonably possible,” the documents say.
Both Bean and Mills were initially recording their encounter with Nichols but removed their cameras while the scene was still active, their letters state. Bean took the camera off his vest and left it on the trunk of a car before walking away to “have a conversation with other officers about the incident,” the letter says. Mills took his vest of entirely, leaving it on another car with the camera still attached, his letter says.
Martin and Haley, the first officers on the scene who dragged Nichols out of his car, didn’t turn their cameras on before the confrontation, according to their statements of charges. Smith also hadn’t activated his camera when he first arrived at the scene, his letter says.
The documents do not clarify whether Haley, Martin or Smith turned on their cameras the second time they encountered Nichols, who was confronted by officers again after he fled on foot. Martin’s letter says he “at some point” took his camera off and put it in his car.
After Nichols’ arrest, the officers’ statements and reports contradicted one another and omitted or distorted key details about their violence toward Nichols, according to the letters.
Their accounts were “not consistent with each other and are not consistent with the publicly known injuries and death of Mr. Nichols,” the documents say.
When speaking to Nichols’ mother after the arrest, Mills and his supervisor “refused to provide an accurate account of her son’s encounter with police or his condition,” his letter says.
Martin made “deceitful” statements in his incident summary, in which he claimed Nichols tried to grab his holstered gun as officers forced him to the ground, his letter says. Video evidence, however, “does not corroborate” his statements, it says, adding Martin never disclosed that he punched and kicked Nichols several times. Instead, it says, he said he administered “body blows.”
Haley also said in a statement and in body camera footage that he heard an officer tell Nichols, “Let my gun go!” But the claim was “deemed untruthful” after a review of video evidence, the documents say.
Both Haley and Martin were internally charged with violating the department policy against providing “knowingly incorrect, false, or deceitful” information, the documents show.
Body camera and surveillance video of Nichols’ arrest released by the city drew widespread reactions of disgust and horror as the footage showed officers punching and beating the man as he lay restrained on the ground.
The police department documents lay out numerous uses of excessive force against Nichols committed by each officer and say several of the men failed to intervene or report the violent actions of their fellow officers.
The documents say Haley “forced (Nichols) out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over (his) head” and “never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest.”
In the following moments, Haley pepper-sprayed Nichols directly in the eyes, then he and Martin kicked him on the ground as he was being handcuffed, the documents say.
At one point, Smith and Bean held Nichols by the arms while other officers pepper-sprayed and “excessively struck” him with a baton, the department says. Smith and Bean also admitted to punching Nichols several times as they tried to handcuff him, the letters say.
The officers also failed to immediately provide aid in the critical moments after the beating or when medical personnel asked that his handcuffs be removed, despite Smith later admitting he has EMT training, the documents say.
Mills knew Nichols had been “pepper sprayed, tased, struck with an ASP baton, punched, and kicked” but didn’t provide him aid, according to the documents. Instead, he admitted in his report he walked away to decontaminate himself from the chemical irritant spray, his letter says.
About 23 minutes passed between the time Nichols appeared to be subdued and a stretcher arriving on scene, video shows.
An autopsy commissioned by Nichols’ family preliminarily found he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” The full report from the family’s autopsy has yet to be released. Officials have also not released Nichols’ autopsy.