On Friday, Davis said the police department still has not been able to confirm whether Nichols was actually driving in a reckless manner.
“We’ve taken a pretty extensive look to determine, you know, what that probable cause was,” she told CNN, “and we have not been able to substantiate that — it doesn’t mean that something didn’t happen, but there’s no proof.”
The incident has put the special unit the officers were operating in under scrutiny. Created in 2021, the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods, also known as the Scorpion unit, is a team of 40 officers who are focused on rooting out violent crimes and motor vehicle thefts. But, in reality, the team has become a force of violence itself, according to attorneys for Nichols’s family, which has called for the unit to be disbanded immediately.
“Tyre Nichols at all times was an innocent victim on that night,” said Antonio Romanucci, who is representing the family alongside renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump. “He did nothing wrong. He was caught up in a sting.”
The lawyers told reporters on Friday that since taking on this case they’ve heard from other Memphis community members who say they were brutalized by members of the unit.
“There’s a brother who said four or five days before this happened to Tyre that same Scorpion unit confronted him while he was in his car going to get pizza,” Crump said. “They threw him on the ground talking about, ‘where the drugs, where the weapons,’ and … put a gun to his head.”
Crump said the man called the department’s internal affairs unit twice to report the incident, but he never heard back. “If they would have responded to him, we might not be here today,” he said.
Crump said he and Nichols’s family were pleased by the decision to charge the officers responsible and how swiftly the justice system has started working in this case.
“We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers — whether they be Black or white — will be held accountable,” Crump said. “No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year, even though we’ve got a video with evidence of the excessive force and the crime. No more can you tell us that.”
