The Tyre Nichols Case: When Policing Goes Wrong

In this episode of Hidden Threads, Macky Outlaw and Jus discuss the tragic death of Tyre Nichols following his encounter with officers from the Memphis Police Department.

We break down the body camera footage, the culture surrounding aggressive police units, and the reality that a small percentage of officers who lose control can permanently damage public trust in law enforcement. This conversation focuses on accountability, leadership failures, use of force, and how incidents like this impact the overwhelming majority of good officers serving honorably every day.

Raw discussion. Real perspective. No political script.

#TyreNichols #PoliceAccountability #HiddenThreadsPodcast #Memphis #LawEnforcement #TrueCrime 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, juice. So I sent you a picture this morning. You did. My wife I was on the golf cart. I made I made the women do the work. Ah, good for you. No, I got up this morning. We moved the horses to another pasture because of a storm coming, they can get in out of the weather better. And we forgot to lock the lower gate. How many of them got out? Two.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And they've been out all night. All night? Yeah. Like just cruising the streets here. Yeah, cruising around. It was nice. Well, at least they stayed close. They went out of the neighbors and ate grass in his yard.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Well, his grass is probably better. I know him. He doesn't care. He'd say, let them eat. Let him lower. You know what I mean? So But yeah, we got lucky. They didn't go up. They went towards the wilderness, not up towards the highway. That's where I get scared if they go up to the highway and people driving crazy up there. But yeah, they had an adventure last night. Do you had to go get both of them? Yeah. That's why the picture you see me driving and they're getting they got the harnesses. So they came up. We had some feed and they came right up to us, but I don't know, man. That was scary. I said, Where'd they go?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Man. And if you follow their hoof, they went the long route, like a ramp. Yeah, these ain't old gray mares that are just retired. They're still active. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

They were nice. They didn't tear nothing up, I don't reckon. And they get ran over. I didn't see any cuts on. So we got lucky. Wow. They're expensive horses too.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

So I was gonna say they're not cheap.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

No, one of them's especially pricey. One of my daughter rides on the contest and stuff. But yeah, it was crazy, man. Got up, looked around, and they were gone. And now our little dog buddy, you know the stray? Yeah, yeah. He'd been barking it all night. I think he was trying to tell us. Yeah. Hey, dummy, you left the gate open. Your horses are out, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Who actually left the gate open though? You? It had been left. Well, I don't know. Me and my daughter were both out there goofing around. Oh, don't blame her. She's a great kid. You wouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

I should have gone around and inspected. You should. You should have. But I should have inspected security. Dereliction of duty. That's right. If it was a marine thing, I'd have got written up.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Oh yeah. Yeah, you'd have got offers two-thirds paid, two two-thirds forfeiture pay. You ever see anybody get bread and water in the hands? On the ship. That's usually shipped. Yeah, on the ship, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Well they put them in the they put them in the ship brig.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

And then they give them food and red bread and water. Yeah. How long? How I have no idea. I I just know one guy that I was in with, he wound up ticking off the old man, put him in hack. He got bread and water for like three meals.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

We always on a I was always on the Nashville, which is a tiny boat. Yeah. Oh yeah. And we didn't have a brig, but they had a special, they just would lock him in one of the rooms. Yeah. So but I we never saw anybody get put on bread and water. Did we had one guy get restricted because he missed movement? Oh you know, he got drunk. That's a no-no. He finally came. We get they got him back later. So we left Malta and then he came back over in Italy. Oh, that was nice of him. But he he he called, he he got a hold of the Navy and said, Hey, look, I missed movement. I was drunk. And then That's court martial right there. They just they just NJP'd him. Well, that's a little bit different. He got busted down. Now he got kicked out of the unit. So but he he got the he got to recover, I guess you'd say. You know, I mean the he you know, it was funny.

unknown 3:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

With it taking one missing movement. Would it take him chow and stuff? It was funny. He got full he got, you know, he got three meals, so yeah. Um water well, all the water he wanted. So but yeah, he got office hours, he got restricted for 30 days on the ship, and then busted from sergeant to Lance Cooldog. And uh maybe he did get a summary.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I can't remember. Well, if he lost that much rank, I think it was a summary quick. Yeah, he had a summary. We had to go watch it. They did it out in the fantail, and everybody got to go watch it kind of thing. Oh yeah, you want popcorn and everything when that takes place.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

The uh colonel pulled his desk out there and everything. Like wow. Now we had some guys in Rota, they went out when they weren't supposed to leave the base. Oh yeah. And they got they just got office hours. Yeah. Wouldn't have been, wouldn't they get busted down a rank, and then but yeah, it was office hours. But uh it was funny. We wanted to go watch that too. Yeah, we had a guy.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

It wasn't our unit, it was a different we were on tax out in the stumps. Oh god, and we had a guy miss a movement. They hammered him. Yeah, how do you miss it out there? You can't go anywhere. Well, his wife drove up from Pendleton. Oh god, picked him up. She drove all the way out to Camp Wilson, picked him up, took him out in town. They got a hotel room. He spent the night. We got up the next morning, and they're like, hey, we're so and so. Not in the A-frame. Oh, that's back in the old A-frame, right? Yeah. Well, oh he came back a couple hours later. They, I guess battalion or whoever picked him up, regiment picked him up, brought him out to the unit. The CO and the first sergeant just said, We're gonna hammer you tomorrow morning, be ready.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah. Camp Wilson. Yeah. So one thing it was it's different now, I'm sure. They got metal huts and all this stuff. Oh man, it's like condos out there now. I've seen pictures of that, but I had the A frames where when the wind blew, the tin came off and we was always out there doing on El Nino when it rained in the desert or snowed in the desert, which is crazy. Oh yeah. I've had a snowball fight in the middle of point pumps. It was where the A-frames were and where the chow hall and the little club was. Yeah. It was like it was like going across, it was like 300 yards. Yeah. Why is it so far away?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

That was crazy. When I got out there, the first time I was out there, we had the A-frames. They had just put the A-frames in. There was no chow hall, there was no little club, there was no, I guess they got a shopette out there now. Really? None of that was there. None of it.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, we used to load up the Hummers and five times and go to the PX.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

With permission. Like you couldn't just leave there because you're pretending like you're on the whatever.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

We'd wait and then we'd hitchhike over to the main side. Yeah. Buy a bunch of beer and bring it back.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

You had to pretend like you're on a deployment. It was stupid.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Oh yeah. It was ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

You had to get permission. You had to write a request to go to the to get a Hummer and go to the PX. Yeah, we didn't. We just hitchhiked and come back with the booze. That was the only PX that you could take a military vehicle and park in the parking lot. Yep. Because of that reason. Because you're coming from Wilson and nobody had cars. But nope. Everywhere else, though, if you drove a Hummer and parked it in a PX parking lot, first sergeants came out of the woodworks. Oh yeah. I know that from experience. Yeah, they'd got to park around back. Yeah, it doesn't work. He came out, he found me. I'm like, Yes. He was yelling and screaming. I was like, I raised my hand and goes, Whoa. And I said, How does he see me? He started laughing.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

They see all kind of stuff. I think him out of the briar patches and find back.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Oh, yeah. So anyway. All right. We had fun with that. This is a lot more serious talk today about Tyree Nichols. Some of y'all may remember the traffic stop happened January 7, 2023, and he died three days later. Unfortunately. All right. This kid seemed like he was not in causing trouble. I'll try to look up his background. It didn't seem like he had any felonies or warrants out for killing somebody. Nothing didn't. He didn't have anything that stood out. No. He was a 29-year-old black American man who was fatally injured by five black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, and died three days later. The officers, all members of the Memphis Police Department Scorpion Unit. Is this the shield? You gotta have a cool name. Strike team scorpion unit. Yeah. You know, when you go around killing citizens, that scorpion thing does it sound good when you're on the stand. Well, it makes it sound more tactical. But not when you're sitting in front of the judge. Oh, it doesn't. Or a jury. Yeah. They pulled Nichols from his car, pepper sprayed him a bunch of times. It just says pepper sprayed him here. They tased him. Basically beat the living daylights out of it. They beat him to death, is what I did. Head injury. Yeah, from a head injury, obviously. All right, let's go through the people involved. Tyree Nichols, a 29-year-old. He worked for FedEx and was a photographer and had a photography website. Right. Normal dude, right? All right. He was raised in Sacramento, moved to Memphis in 2020. His mother is Miss Wells. According to his family attorney, Nichols was almost possibly slim due to Crohn's disease. So he couldn't eat junk food, basically. He couldn't hardly do anything. Weighed 145 pounds, six foot, tall, skinny guy, six foot three, skinny fella. Police officers, five black Memphis police officers, keep saying black. I don't care what these guys are for whatever reason they had they wanted to beat somebody up that night. Yep. You had to Darius Bean, age 24, Demetrius Haley, age 30. Emmett Martin, 30, Desmond Mills, 32. Justin Smith, 28. And they weren't they'd all been around for five to three years. All right. Some more senior than others. He had Dwayne Smith, who was the uh supervisor with 25 years' experience in the Scorpion unit. So he was on the Scorpion unit. He just wasn't with that bunch that day. Right. Uh he arrived at the scene later at during a beating and didn't do anything. He retired a day before an administrative hearing in which he was expected to be dismissed. Smith was subsequently considered for decertification, which bars police officers from working again in the jurisdiction that certifies them. The documents accompanying the decertification request contended it. Smith failed to address Nichols' complaint that he could not breathe, failed to obtain reports from the police officers as they to their use to force, told Nichols' family that Nichols had been driving under the influence despite lack of information to support that charge, and failed to wear a body camera in violation of the department's policy. So he did everything, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Now I think they did the coroner's report, toxicology came back. He did have alcohol in his system and a little bit of cannabis. Okay. HC. So we have DUIs millions a night, millions a day. Yep. And they now he was well under the limit. He was well under the limit. I think he was like 0.04 or something.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

I mean, you have drunk driving all the time. They get him out, put handcuffs, and take them to jail without beating their skull in. Right. So even if they thought he was drunk, they'd still, it's not right.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

But again, he was a pot smoker. And I don't care what anybody says. My experience is anybody, anybody that's doing crank, heroin, anybody that's doing any of the hard drugs like that, they want to fight. I don't care. I don't care where you are, they want to fight. I've never had a pot smoker, hey man, let's do this and start fighting. They're always like, man, you got me, dude. Yeah, potero one is not an aggressive drug. No. It it makes some people paranoid, but nobody, I've never in my life run into anybody. And I smoked pot when I was younger. I had friends that smoke pot. I got friends that still smoke pot. I've never seen anybody want to fight after they smoked some pot. Me neither.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

I've always seen it tone people down. Yeah. I'm not a proponent of marijuana. I think it'll ruin your life, but it's not like Crystal Math, where they're wide open. Yeah, so I agree. So we got Preston Hemphill. He's another guy that showed up. He's a white officer who's hired by the Memphis Police Department in 2018. I was identified as a sixth officer involved in the initial traffic stop. Hemphill was among the first officers to encounter Nichols during the January 7th traffic stop. He deployed his taser during the confrontation on his body camera video. He's seen chasing Nichols down the road. He then turns back to the scene of the initial traffic stop. Hempel was heard on his body cam saying twice, I hope they stomp his ass before Nichols fled the scene.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Okay. On January 30th, Memphis Police Department announced that Hempel had been relieved of his duty pending outcome of administrative investigation. He was fired from the police department. And in February. He also wrote a false report. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

How do you write a false report when it's recorded? It's easy. It's absolutely easy. One, you're an idiot, and two, you just don't care.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Isn't most body cam footage now transmitted to the cloud? What we can't go back and erase it.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Well depends on the cameras. I've never had one that'll do that. All of them have the little SD cards in it. And every morning you take it out, put it in the chief's box with your name and stuff on it, and he reviews it that day. Puts it in the storage or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I think now they transmit though. Yeah, they probably do. It's being uploaded to the cloud where you can't no matter what you do, it's gonna be on file.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Well, I I don't doubt it. I mean, that that's the technology they had the last time I was policing. That was like 1943. It was close. It was 1827. How was the war of 1812? Was it raw? Yes. How about World War VIII? No.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Nine was really tough though. World War 11's going on now. Yeah. But anyway, that's an that's a joke. If you don't know the news, go watch the news, right? Let's keep going here. They said that hempill, this guy, would not be criminally charged in connection to Nichols' death because through a thorough investigation, including reviewing hours of body cam footage and interviewing witnesses. But I do believe he was fired because of violation of agency policy. Yeah, he wrote a false report and all that. He was also named in a civil lawsuit as well. The scorpion unit.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Bump bump bah. As soon as you get caught lying about anything, your career is over. None of your cases are really gonna go in front of a judge.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Right. Here we go. A scorpion unit was assembled by Memphis Police Chief Carolyn J. Davis in October 2021 to deal with serious crimes. So reckless driving is a not a serious crime. No. Let the uniforms deal with it, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Well, it depends. If you're working it, if you're working a high drug area and you have probable cause for a stop and you may work it into something, but you don't just stop the guy, jerk him out of the car, and just start throwing a melee on him. It's the the polyester pig pile that happened, that's absolutely unsat.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Most drug cops I've met or know or you or detectives. They don't get involved in that kind of thing. They're dealing with, hey, let's go bust Johnny the drug dealer down the road. Prostitution rings like human trafficking, big time deals. Let the uniforms deal with the traffic. We're dealing with this. That's what the Scorpion Unit's there for. Yeah what I mean. The Scorpion has been compared to the Red Dog unit Davis commanded in 2006 and 2007 as a member of the Atlanta Police Department in Georgia. Davis described the red dog as utilizing aggressive crime fighting strategies in high crime areas citywide. Good. Do it. Right? The red dog unit was disbanded in 2011 after the city agreed to settle a lawsuit regarding excessive force by red dog officers. So it seems to be what I've seen on these special task force is they think that the department rules don't b apply. They forget, you know what I mean? Hey, yeah, we're out here dealing with rough people, but you still got to You have to maintain bearing.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

You have to, yeah, you can't be just going off the handle for no reason. Cracking skulls. Yeah. Breaking legs, whatever. They had uh, what is it, the the LA Sheriff's Office? They had a gang of sheriff's deputies had these tattoos that signaled them out just like this strike force scorpion stuff. They all just hit the news. It wasn't that long ago. Right. Because they're all out committing crimes, beating people up.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

I mean, it's still, I mean, you gotta have a warrant to arrest somebody or probable cause, right? On the street, you gotta have a reason, or they gotta looks like they're committing a crime or appears that they will commit a crime. Right, right. Just because they got a tattoo or look like a gangbanger, you can't go up and start beating on them. That's called profiling. Yeah. That's illegal. Yeah. And then it turns into assault. Yeah. These guys got charged with uh false imprisonment, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. So Nichols was two minutes away from his home when he was stopped by MPD at 8 24 p.m. on January 7th. Officers Haley Martin and Preston Hempel conducted an initial stop of Nichols at the intersection of East Rains and Ross Road near Autumn Ridge neighborhood. The police vehicle surrounded his car on three sides. Fine. All right. Uh the body worn camouflage footage released by the city of Memphis does not show any activity earlier than an officer responding to a stop in progress. So they weren't tasting him around, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

No.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Haley and Martin were at the traffic stop when Hemp Hill arrived at 824. Haley pulled Nichols out of his car and said, and as the boy said, I didn't do anything. An officer shouted, get it on the bleeping ground. And moments later, an officer shouted, I'm gonna tase you. Well this escalated quickly.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Right from the rip. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Why not? Write the kid a ticket. We'll see you. Yeah. Not that they smelled marijuana. You could ask him to get out, right? If you don't want to get out, you can pull him out. But does it take three or five people to handle this deal? Well, it it does if you're gonna stomp them. So there's what a kid made a mistake. I mean, he didn't done. I think he might have been guilty of smoking dope in the car, maybe, but that's doesn't you don't crack his skull till he dies, right? A third officer held a taser against Nichols' leg while he was also used his right hand to hold Nichols to the ground. From the moment that Nichols was pulled from the car to being held on the ground, the officer simultaneously yelled numerous commands, threats, expletives, and made assaulted comments. Okay, whatever, at him. While being held on the ground, an officer intended to yell for Nichols to lie down. So he's on the ground near the yellow to lie down. Nichols responded, I'm on the ground. An officer yelled back, Lay on your stomach. Moments later, Haley deployed a pepper spray against Nichols, which hit several of the other officers. Yeah. Nichols broke free and began to run. Scared. Right. He thinks he's getting killed, right? Yeah, I get it. Right. And he was pursued by at least two officers. Two more police units arrived on the scene. Footage showed that one officer who remained at the area of the traffic stop said, I hope they stomp him. We talked about that again. The officers caught up to him, had him on the ground at Castlegate Lane, about a half mile away, about 800 meters. From the original stop, footage from a pole-mounted CCTV camera showed an officer using his legs to push Nichols hard to the ground. Between 833 and 330, 836 p.m., Nichols was punched and pepper sprayed a second time, and kicked in the upper torso, nervous time by a fourth officer, and the officers can be heard yelling, I'm going to baton you after before striking Nichols several times with a baton, then punched five times in the face by an officer.

unknown 19:33

Man.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Can't we just get him on the ground and put cuffs on this dude?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I I get it, but and I know everybody's adrenaline in situations, just dumps, and everybody's just it's cr it's crazy times. One person needs to be given that person commands. One, not five people giving five different commands because he's not going to hear everything. You know they're going to have tunnel vision. They're only gonna they're gonna have an auditory occlusion, they're not gonna hear everything. One person given the commands.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Right. Right. Another problem they had is when they got him finally cuffed and stuffed. Well, they didn't stuff him. The ambulance came in and picked himself. And the ambulance showed up, they didn't do anything in like 16-20 minutes. Yeah, they didn't render any aid. They got in trouble. And the cops are standing around them joking and talking about how they just beat him up. Yeah. I see problems there, Juice. I do too. I don't care. Okay, here's my take. Again, it's worth about a penny or a dime. Maybe seven cents in the middle. I don't know, Juice. What do you think? I don't know. Depends on what you're gonna say. Even enemy combatants we had overseas, we rendered aid to them. Yes. And this isn't an enemy combatant, this is U.S. citizen. Yes. And you gotta render aid. You do. But if you're the guy while he was on the ground and you continue after he's subdued, and you continue beating him on the head with your stick and punching him, you think they were out to murder a guy that night?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

I don't know if they were out to murder, but they were out again, I've I've said it before, bullies with badges. They were looking for something. And they thought this this kid was gonna be the easy pickings. And I think one of them escalated the rest of them. Yeah. And it turned into that that polyester pig pile, and they stomped that kid for no reason. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Now, if he'd have pulled a gun, got it. Oh yeah. I guarded pulling a knife, any kind of weapon, he appears to just laid on the ground and they booked him.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, and the only thing he did, and I believe because he was scared, was he ran. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Trying to separate from this butt whooping he was getting. Yeah. Right. Yeah, this is a problem here. Now, some people, some when they pull them over, they pull weapons, argue for no reason, or they have drugs and And don't cooperate, right? This kid seemed like he cooperated and they could have got cuffs on him pretty easily. Right. And it turned into a a butt whoop and it ended up dead.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

There's a lot of them that that just amp up the situation that it doesn't need to be. I mean, I've arrested people and had them screaming and yelling, crying, ready to fight. And by the time I got them down to the jail, we were laughing and telling jokes. And I I still helped them. Hey man, this is what you gotta do. Gotta you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Yeah, you know, this is what you gotta go see the judge.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yeah. But see what big deal. And they they understood I was just doing my job. I've had the parents yelling and screaming at me. Well, they gotta listen, I'll help you out. This is all you gotta do. Call a bondsman, get everything set up. By the time I get that person down there and walk them through the booking process, you'll be there taking care of it. It's just gonna be out the side door into the car and you go home until your court date. Right. You know, there's no reason to treat anybody like crap, even if you're you're arresting them. Right. They're still human beings. And to go hands-on, as soon as you get that person in control, you de-escalate. I think they'd done it before and got away with it. That's all my opinion. You you didn't get it to that level like this was the first time. Yeah, they were being aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah, they were the goon squad. Yeah. Most departments have a goon squad. Bigger departments like your cities. Yeah. But the goon squad is there for aggressive behavior, right? Yeah. They come support police officers that are having trouble.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Oh yeah. It doesn't matter, like on the road or in corrections. You know, they have a rapid response team. I was on that. They had a cell extraction team. I was on that. But it was reactive to the situation or the behavior of the inmate. Right. So you can't just go in there and get the rapid response team together and go, look, we need to find one and beat the living daylights out of them today.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

To make an example.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah. Or whatever. Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

I don't know, man. Do you ever get doo-doo on your on the cell extraction? Yes. I've seen that, I've heard of that where they smear crap all over the place. Oh, yeah. And they are hard to get a hold of. And you got to get them out, and it's nasty.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

So and I I I have had an inmate cover himself, and I didn't know I was just walking around doing inside security, and he was ready to get extracted from a cell, and I went walking into the cell block, the dorm, and everybody's yelling at me through the window, stop, stop, stop. I'm like pop the door. They told me what was going on. I popped, they popped the door. I stuck my head in, head in. I seen the inmate who I knew, and I told him, I said, You're gonna regret it if I get anything on me. Oh, we're you're straight offs of the juice. You get a pass. And then I went out and talked to the guy, and in five minutes, I had him washing himself off, cleaning up the cell. Everything was good. I leave 15 minutes later, I'm back down there because he's ready to fight covered in doo-doo again. So yeah, it it's the officers amped them up. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

All right, my man. We're gonna close it up for the day. And then get anything else cool to say?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Other than buy just just buy juice. All right. We'll see y'all again on another episode soon. So