Tire Nichols: Memphis Scorpion street crime unit faces calls to disband

The Memphis Police Department’s elite SCORPION street crime unit is facing calls to disband after several members were involved in the traffic stop that resulted in the beating and death of Tire Nichols.

The unit was created to combat rising violent crime, but critics say its aggressive tactics and lack of oversight are a recipe for tragedies like the fatal beating of Nichols, revealed in all its savagery in footage released Friday.

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who represents the Nichols family, said such units can become “a pack of wolves” and called for an end to the SCORPION unit.

“We believe this was a pattern and a practice, and Tire is dead because that pattern and that practice were not controlled by the people who were supposed to control it,” Crump told a news conference.

Five officers have been charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ death, though it was unclear how many of them were part of the SCORPION unit, and the MPD has not released that information.

Newly released footage of the initial traffic stop that led to Nichols’ death shows police officers in the unit’s favorite unmarked Dodge Chargers, wearing hoodies emblazoned with the logo of the Organized Crime Unit, of which SCORPION is part.

Founded in October 2021 due to pressure on rising crime, SCORPION, stands for Operation Street Crime to Restore Peace to our Neighborhoods. Its mandate is to stop homicides, assaults and robberies.

Memphis officials have said the unit consists of about 40 officers in four teams that focus on crime hotspots.

Each team has members focused on auto theft, gang investigations and “crime suppression,” Mayor Jim Strickland said in a January 2022 speech.

A 2021 video of the unit’s launch showed several dozen officers, mostly men, taking roll before going on patrol. Some were wearing civilian clothes and driving cars without identification.

In its first months of existence, between October 2021 and January 23, 2022, SCORPION made 566 arrests.

Of those, 390 were felony arrests, according to Strickland. Officers seized tens of thousands of dollars and more than 250 weapons, the mayor said.

However, there have been previous complaints about SCORPION’s alleged heavy-handed tactics.

Cornell McKinney told WREG-TV that the same SCORPION team involved in Nichols’ death arrested him on Jan. 3, four days before Nichols’ fatal beating.

‘All I heard is a ‘Freeze, get out of the car. Put your hands up MF before he blows your head off. The two got out of the car. Put your hands up,” she said, recalling the incident, which occurred while she was taking a lift home with a friend.

“So I put my hands up, and one of the officers proceeded to approach the car, and physically pulled me by the shoulder with a gun no more than a foot from my head,” McKinney said.

McKinney said the cops accused them of having drugs in the car and demanded to know which of the two friends owned the drugs.

But he says the cops admitted they hadn’t found any drugs and let the two men go free.

Later, seeing the officers charged with Nichols’ death, he recognized the faces of the same officers who had arrested him.

The five police officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr, and Justin Smith, were fired and charged with second-degree murder.

A veteran former Memphis police officer who said he knew each of the charged ex-police officers, said CBS News that ‘you have to be an entrepreneur, for the most part’ to join the SCORPION unit.

“You have to be someone who wants to make a difference, who wants to catch the bad guy,” he said of the unit’s “proactive” mentality.

“I never thought this would happen,” added the former officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Because at least some of the officers accused of murdering Nichols belonged to SCORPION, questions have been raised as to whether they were acting as part of the unit when they pulled him over for alleged reckless driving.

Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, died in the hospital three days after the violent physical confrontation on January 7 with the five black officers.

Since then, the five officers have been charged with second degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression and have been fired from their jobs.

Nichols’ case raised concerns that the unit strayed from its primary mission, had inadequate supervision and used tactics that increased the risk of violence.

Crump, the attorney for Nichols’ family, said Nichols’ encounter with police began with a traffic stop, which is not within the unit’s mandate to address violent crime.

Critics say such stops are excuses to search for weapons or drugs and can escalate into violence.

It is not the first time such units have faced scrutiny. In 2020, following the police murder of George Floyd, New York City dismantled its Anti-Crime Unit, which operated with similar tactics and goals to SCORPION.

Last January, amid a skyrocketing violent crime, the Anti-Crime Unit was clamped down weeks after Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, took office vowing to be tough on crime.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis this week announced a review of all specialized units of the police department, including SCORPION, in response to Nichols’ death. She called the incident “appalling, reckless and inhumane.”

The department did not immediately respond to questions about the status of SCORPION, previous complaints against the unit and whether the five officers were assigned to it.