American communities need robust law enforcement, and the vast majority of police officers are public servants performing dangerous work with dedication. The footage of Memphis police officers killing Tyre Nichols in early January, however, is all the more unbearable because Americans have seen the likes of it so many times before. Too many Americans today live in fear that they may suffer abuse or excessive force at the hands of police officers who are sworn to protect them.

Not even the Memphis police chief could dismiss the video footage of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols being fatally beaten by cops in early January. On the day before its public release, police chief Cerelyn Davis declared the attack “heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

Three weeks after his death at the hands of Memphis police, Tyre Nichols is finally being laid to rest. On Wednesday, friends and family gathered to celebrate Nichols’ life at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Several lawmakers and civil rights advocates, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and Vice President Kamala Harris, attended the ceremony and expressed their condolences. 

If the fact that police killings have reached record highs the past two years didn’t make it clear, the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols should: tragically little has changed since the unprecedented George Floyd protests of 2020.

Nichols’s murder — in which he was viciously beaten by a group of Memphis police officers during a traffic stop — has prompted more calls for the unfinished business of police reform. But what exactly is the way forward?

On a frigid Wednesday afternoon, RowVaughn Wells looked into the crowd of hundreds inside the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, and gave her own call to action in the funeral service for her son Tyre Nichols, who was beaten to death by Memphis police earlier this month. Her voice cracked as she joined a fellowship of other Black mothers who lost their children to police violence over the years.

Wells remembered her son as a “beautiful person”, adding that “for this to happen to him is unimaginable”.

The relatives of Black people killed by police in cities across the United States came to Tyre Nichols' funeral in a Memphis church on Wednesday to offer comfort to the family of the Black 29-year-old, who was fatally beaten by officers last month.

Speaking over a flower-bedecked casket at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, preachers recalled a young man who loved photography and skateboarding, and demanded justice for Nichols.

A moving funeral service for Tyre Nichols — who died this month following a vicious beating at the hands of police — took place Wednesday in Memphis, bookended by a 70-person gospel choir and featuring an address from Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some 25 years ago, I remember sitting on the Shooting Review Board for the King County Sheriff’s Office, a large metropolitan police department serving the Seattle region. I recall listening to an investigator explain the chain of events that had led to the fatal shooting of a man fleeing the scene of an armed robbery. My memory is that the man had a long criminal record and had just committed another felony. Not a sympathetic figure to me or the public, but still a human being.

The nation's top law enforcement organizations are signaling that they are willing to work with Congress again to reach a bipartisan compromise on police reform following the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, but many are not optimistic that there will be a positive legislative outcome.

A Florida police chief who flashed her badge and asked to be let go from a traffic stop has resigned, Tampa officials said Monday.

“Tampa Mayor Jane Castor has requested and received the resignation of Police Chief Mary O’Connor, following the completion of an Internal Affairs investigation into a recent traffic stop involving O’Connor,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office.

Assistant Police Chief Lee Bercaw will serve as interim police chief, the mayor said.