Five former Memphis police officers were indicted Thursday on murder charges in the death of Tyre Nichols, whose beating after a traffic stop was captured on video that “sickened” a top Tennessee law enforcement official.
The officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired after, Police Chief C.J. Davis said, they violated department policies during the Jan. 7 stop that led to Nichols' death.
All five former officers were charged with second-degree murder, two counts of official misconduct, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, one count of official oppression and one count of aggravated assault, prosecutors announced.
“The actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told reporters.
Second-degree murder, the most serious of the charges, “is a knowing killing,” Mulroy said.
Video of the encounter will be released after 6 p.m. local time Friday, officials said. Memphis police chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis said Thursday that she expected citizens to be outraged by what she called the "heinous, reckless and inhumane" conduct captured in the video. She said she expected people to protest and called on them to remain peaceful.
It wasn't clear if the department was taking precautionary measures ahead of possible demonstrations. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Law enforcement officials in other cities said they were preparing for protests or monitoring events. In Washington D.C., the police department said in a statement that it had "fully activated" all sworn personnel and promised to take "swift law enforcement action should anyone break the law."
In Minneapolis, a department spokesman said its office of community safety will "maintain its mission of protecting the safety of this community while respecting the constitutional rights of all citizens," while in San Francisco, authorities said they were preparing to respond to developments linked to Nichols' death.
Haley and Martin were being held in lieu of $350,000 bond, while Bean will need to post $250,000 to leave custody, jail records showed.
Mills and Smith posted $250,000 bond and were released late Thursday, according to jail records.
“No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” William Massey, Martin’s attorney, told reporters. “No one, no one. That’s shocking to the officer.”
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation led the probe, and Director David Rausch said the video will be clear-cut.
"Simply put: This shouldn't have happened," he said. "I've been policing for more than 30 years. I've devoted my life to this profession, and I'm aggrieved. Frankly, I'm shocked. I'm sickened by what I saw."
Rausch added: “Let me be clear: What happened here does not at all reflect proper policing. This was wrong. This was criminal.”
Defense attorney Blake Ballin, representing Mills, criticized Rausch for his strong language describing the video.
"To say things like that when you have a tinderbox that we’re all concerned about," Ballin said. "I have questions about whether those were the rights words to use, whether this was the right timing and whether the government should be saying those things about people who are innocent until proven guilty."
Ballin and Massey said they’ve yet to see police video.
Already bracing for what it could show, Ballin urged the public not to jump to any conclusions immediately after it is released.
"I would just caution the public to reserve judgment," Ballin said. "Know that there's always more to the story. And although there’s a promise to release a video [Friday], I don't know how many angles, I don't know whose perspective this video will show the incident. But there is always more to the story."
Nichols' family welcomed the indictments.
Charges against the officers give "us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre," Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the attorneys for the family, said in a statement.
"This young man lost his life in a particularly disgusting manner that points to the desperate need for change and reform to ensure this violence stops occurring during low-threat procedures, like in this case, a traffic stop," they said.
"This tragedy meets the absolute definition of a needless and unnecessary death."
Early findings in an autopsy conducted by a forensic pathologist for Nichols' family show he was severely beaten before he died, the attorneys said this week.
Nichols, 29, died Jan. 10, days after the confrontation that landed him in the hospital.
The Shelby County medical examiner’s office hasn’t released an official cause of death.
Nichols had been pulled over in the Memphis' Hickory Hill neighborhood for alleged reckless driving, officials said.
After an “initial altercation" when "pepper spray was deployed,” Nichols ran, Mulroy told reporters Thursday.
“There was another altercation at a nearby location where serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols," Mulroy continued. "After some period of time of waiting around afterward, he was taken away by an ambulance.”
Mulroy declined to go into greater detail about the deadly confrontation.
A photo provided by his stepfather showed a hospitalized Nichols with blood on his face and what appeared to be a swollen eye.
Nichols' family and their attorneys, Crump and Romanucci, have viewed the body camera video.
Romanucci described it as an “unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating” for three minutes, saying the officers treated Nichols like a "human piñata.
Crump compared the video to “the Rodney King video,” referring to the 1991 bystander video of Los Angeles police officers beating a Black man.
Representatives of the Memphis Police Association, which represents rank-and-file officers, could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said he hopes that when the video is made public, it will push lawmakers to take decisive action to reform police.
"Tell us what you’re going to do to honor Tyre Nichols," Johnson said in a statement Thursday. "Tell us what you’re going to do to show his family, his loving son, and this entire nation, that his life was not lost in vain. We can name all the victims of police violence, but we can’t name a single law you have passed to address it.”
In a statement, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the host of MSNBC's "PoliticsNation," said police video was designed to make sure officers follow the law.
"There is no point to putting a body camera on a cop if you aren’t going to hold them accountable when the footage shows them relentlessly beating a man to death," Sharpton said.
"Firings are not enough. Indictments and arrests are not convictions. As we’ve done in the past — with George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and others — we will stand by this family until justice is done. A conviction sends a message to the nation that cops cannot hide behind their badge after committing a heinous action like this.”
