In the wake of Tyre Nichols death, the lawyer for his family has asked the US Congress to pass police reform laws as soon as possible.
In January, five police officers beat Mr. Tyre Nichols, who was 29 years old, to death.
Ben Crump told US media that President Joe Biden should use the death of Mr. Tyre Nichols to get people to back the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
He also said that Mr. Nichols’s mother was dealing with the death of her son by hoping that it would lead to change.
“She knows in her heart that Tyre was sent here for a reason and that this terrible thing will lead to something good,” Mr. Crump said.
In 2021, after Mr. Floyd was killed by a white police officer who had been kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was passed. His death caused protests all over the world.
The bill would make it easier to bring charges against police officers who use chokeholds and would ban chokeholds at the federal level.
In March 2021, the Democratic Party, which ran the House of Representatives at the time, passed the bill. However, opposition in the Senate stopped it from becoming law.
Mr. Crump told CNN, “It would be a shame if we didn’t use his tragic death to finally pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.” The lawyer said that police would keep killing people if the law didn’t change.
Derrick Johnson, who is in charge of the civil rights group NAACP, also asked lawmakers to do something.
In a statement, Mr. Johnson said, “If you don’t write a law, you’re writing another obituary.” “We can list all the people who have been hurt by police violence, but we can’t think of a single law you’ve made to stop it.”
But Jim Jordan, who is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and is a Republican, warned lawmakers not to pass laws too quickly.
“These five people didn’t care about living at all… I don’t know if there is anything you can do to stop the kind of evil we saw in that video “He said this on NBC’s Meet the Press.
A friend of Mr. Nichols’s from childhood told the BBC that his legacy would live on through changes to the law. Angelina Paxton said that he “always wanted to make the world a better place.”
Ms. Paxton said that Mr. Tyre Nichols cared a lot about the Black Lives Matter movement.
She said, “He always tried to make a difference.” “If it helps anyone deal with the pain we’re all feeling right now, just know that I’m sure he’s up there smiling right now because he finally did what he always wanted to do.”
On Saturday, the Memphis Police Department broke up the so-called Scorpion special unit, which was made up of the police officers who are now being charged with murder.
The unit was made up of 50 people who worked together to cut down on crime, especially car thefts and crimes related to gangs.
“Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods” was what “Scorpion” stood for.
The Memphis police department fired Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin III, and Justin Smith last week.
According to jail records, four of the five had paid bail and were free by Friday morning.
Lawyers for Mr. Martin and Mr. Mills have said that their clients will say “not guilty.”
Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis told BBC News on Friday that the Scorpion unit was made to be “more responsive” and “more proactive” about gun violence in the city. But she said that the police officers who beat Tyre Tyre Nichols so badly “decided to go off the rails.”
“We are giving each unit its own evaluation,” she said. “This is a very important step. We want everyone to know everything about us.”
Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. said that two deputy sheriffs who “appeared on the scene after” the fight are also on leave while an internal investigation is done.
