Shortly after the Memphis Police Department released video Friday night showing five of its officers wildly beating the life out of an unarmed, 29-year-old, amateur photographer named Tyre Nichols, the president of Maryland’s Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement.
“What I witnessed in that video was horrific. It was a barbaric assault on another human being and is sickening,” the statement from Clyde Boatwright said. “This does not represent policing or the men and women who wear a badge and dutifully protect their communities. I hesitate to even call these men police officers, because what I saw on that video is not policing.”
We wish he were right, that this horrific incident of a young Black man being stripped of his humanity and his very life by police officers drunk on their own power were somehow singular. But it’s not. That’s a fiction. Nichols’ tragic death is only the latest in a string of unchecked brutality against Black men by police in America.
