What Killed Tyre Nichols

Is U.S. policing in a death spiral? Yes, as long as the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by five Memphis police officers is portrayed as a manifestation of racism. The problems underlying that horrifying episode—the recruitment crisis, lax hiring standards, and depolicing—will worsen, intensified by the very policies ostensibly adopted to prevent another such travesty. The vicious circle of rising crime and a flight from the profession will accelerate.

President Joe Biden adopted the racism narrative before much was known about the Nichols beating. Even before the videos from the officers’ body cameras had been released, Biden was blaming Nichols’s death on systemic racism. After the video release, Biden claimed that the killing was representative of what “black and brown Americans experience every single day.” He reinforced that theme in his recent State of the Union speech. “Every single time” a black child walks in the street, plays in a park, or gets into a car, Biden said, his parents rightly worry that racist cops might kill him before he makes it home. “What happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often,” Biden alleged.

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-Chuck