5 former Memphis police officers face assassinate charges in Tyre Nichols’ dying

Going to start though with the breaking news we've been following all five Memphis officers fired for their involvement in the arrest of Tyree Nichols have turned themselves in and are facing now some criminal charges and this comes as authorities in the city are preparing for the release of Buddy Camp footage showing Nichols arrest the.

29 year old died just three days after a traffic stop police pulled him over for what they said was reckless driving but it escalated into a violent altercation now we have the mug shots of the five former Memphis police officers all of them have been charged with murder CBS News correspondent Elise Preston knows Memphis well she is there covering.

This story for us Elise we want to kind of get more from you from the new information that's fresh right now there are report that former Memphis police officer Emmett Martin III has been indicted in this case what can you tell us about him and any other potential charges for the five involved well we have been seeing these uh.

Charges these indictments uh pop up on the court records right now we can tell you that at least one of the officers former officers excuse me Demetrius Haley he is charged with second-degree murder the other charges that are popping up for officer former officer Haley aggravated assault aggravated kidnapping official misconduct and.

Official oppression keep in mind Errol that these charges are coming in as we speak so we're working to confirm exactly what the five officers are charged with if they are facing the same charges but I can tell you at least one of them is facing second-degree murder aggravated kidnapping aggravated assault official misconduct and official.

Oppression arrow and Elise how is the community starting to respond to these charges well I can tell you that this has just happened in the last about 10 minutes or so is when these notices started to come so we haven't seen too much of anything right now we're in front of the Shelby County Criminal Justice complex here uh.

201 Poplar is the address everyone knows it very well here in Memphis I haven't seen too many people showing up outside of people media just kind of waiting around uh to see what's going to happen today and there was this angst there was anticipation that some charges might come because the Memphis police chief she posted on Twitter a video statement.

Late last night around 10 30 central time and it was the first time that we had been he that we had actually heard from the Memphis police chief she said that what happened was inhumane she said what she saw was heinous and she warned people that they were going to see some video in the coming days that would probably not sit right with them that it.

Was just a very violent incident that occurred and that was captured on video and there are some things as you spoke with us earlier about that seem different when it comes to police video of violent encounters and death there in Memphis specifically you mentioned the new district attorney who appears to be taking a different attack than we've.

Seen from others in making decisive action before video is even released give us some more of that context to understand why this appears to be slightly different than cases we've seen previously including the fact that the office is involved and the victim they're all all black men yeah this case is incredibly different.

It is unprecedented um here in Memphis as far as how people are responding the district attorney that you mentioned Steve mulroy he's been in office about five months and he is a former federal civil rights attorney he's a former Shelby County Commissioner he has been a long time he's been very vocal in years past about.

Police reform and so one of his campaign promises was a Justice review unit and part of their responsibility would be to operate independently and invest investigate police misconduct uh situations I asked him on camera a few days ago is this unit involved in this case he said absolutely he said that he brought in two attorneys civil rights.

Attorneys excuse me two attorneys to kind of review what was going on and they were working independently so they were only reporting to him they weren't uh they weren't working with other people so it was an independent investigation by the Justice review unit and so that is what we're seeing come into play I can also tell you that just.

A lot of people who typically would be mum in situations here in Memphis they have been very vocal about what happened and keep in mind so many people have not even seen the tape we've only heard about the tape we have heard words describe it as violent as as heinous the Memphis police chief she called it inhumane and Attorney Ben Crump who is.

Representing the family he said that it reminded him unfortunately of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police yeah the police chief also a black woman um really not standing on the side of her officers there being being very direct that this was inhumane and unacceptable yeah Elise thank you I want.

To bring in cook Burkhalter he is a professor of the New York School of Law and director of the 21st century policing project I'm sure you were just able to hear elise's report there what jumps out at you about the charges we're seeing now and what we've seen from Memphis Police over the past few days that seems in Stark relief to other.

Incidents that have been similar uh good afternoon so one thing that jumps out is the murder two the second degree murder charge quite often we see police officers who are involved in the death of another when they're charged they're charged with some form of Reckless or criminally negligent homicide is very rare except for extreme.

Cases to charge a police officer with murder because of the culpable mental state that's required to prove that crime in this instance uh what goes along with murder 2 is the prosecution will have to prove that the officer acted knowingly meaning that he knew uh his actions would have a particular result and acted on those actions you.

Know in an attempt to achieve that result so that's just under intention intent rather and premeditation so that's something that's very uh interesting uh also the police department's response here has been somewhat measured and an attempt to stay ahead of this a lot of folks are curious why the video hasn't been released.

What's taking so long and I think the police department prosecutors want to control the narrative because what normally happens is when the video is released what does the public what do we all say well my goodness we can all see plainly that this is murder or it's some form of criminal homicide why hasn't an arrest been made so here there's an.

Effort to stay ahead of this and prepare uh the public and being transparent and absolutely calling the video what it is which I haven't seen but calling the video heinous and so forth so the response by the police department by the local government there is is very much an attempt to stay ahead of what is going on here and to be transparent with.

The public Professor Burkhalter Arrow mentioned you run the 21st century policing project tell us uh what went so wrong with this traffic stop it seems too frequently that we hear this same storyline it was a it was a traffic incident that ended up with someone dead what needs to change to try and prevent this the horrific type of escalation.

Well it's a little difficult to answer that question without seeing the video and reading some of the reports but my initial thought is uh one thing that strikes me is that this was a uh report saw that these officers were members of a specialized unit so it'll be interesting to find out were they working together all five of.

Them or did other officers respond the reason why this is so important is the issue of supervision we've seen over and over and this is a phenomenon of small group psychology that a pair of people are a single individual uh reacts very differently than when you put together four or five folks there's a phenomenon of full small group psychology that.

Takes over folks feel a little bit more empowered they take different actions then they might normally take if there was only one person or two offices and that's why quite often when you put together four or five police officers uh one should require some form of direct supervision you just don't kind of send police officers on uh out in their own.

Devices they're not a gang this is the police department so that's the first thing that jumps out at me how these officers were supervised and then further you know folks talk about training there are some things you can trade away if you have a propensity for violence that you know you can't trade that way but however certainly one has.

To look at how officers are trained and educated as to how folks are going to respond to their actions and initially what actions to take quick question for you Kirk because it's because you have expertise in this area have we seen a similar incident where white officers were disciplined so quickly before the release of questionable video.

Well that is the elephant in the room here of course the victim uh was African-American and the police officers are African-American and I think in this case you know we've seen uh perhaps with uh the the murder of George Floyd I mean you have to think of some extreme incidents however I think when we have seen an incident this extreme with.

Regards to the violence we have seen uh the alleged violence you know once again not having seen the video but we've seen uh the authorities react quite quickly I think it's important for the authorities to react quickly whether the police officers are black or white uh this incident is unfortunately unfortunately about violence now of course it could be.

Racially motivated you know there's no rule that says one cannot be motivated by race just because they are of the same race of their victim however this is about violence it's about uh possibly um misconduct violation of civil rights and so forth but it'll be interesting to see how that question plays out absolutely fascinating especially your.

Point about small group psychology all this brings to mind the responsibility of individual officers to say stop when something is wrong Professor Kirk burkhalder thank you so much thank you professor thank you

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