Tyre Nichols, the man whose death this month at the hands of Memphis police led to the dismissal of five officers, loved to photograph sunsets and to skateboard, a passion he’d had since he was a boy.

Mr. Nichols, 29, who worked for FedEx and had a 4-year-old son, was too old to be skating anymore, said his stepfather, Rodney Wells.

“You’ve got to put that skateboard down,” Mr. Wells remembered telling Mr. Nichols not long before he died. “You’ve got a full-time job now.”

The nation stands shocked, once again, by a video of horrific violence by police officers against a young Black man beaten to death—this time Tyre Nichols of Memphis.

We instinctively flinch from watching this video because most people with a functioning conscience intuitively know it to be evil. At this moment, Christians should acknowledge not only that the Bible condemns this sort of police behavior but also why.

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.

Hundreds are expected to gather here Wednesday for the funeral of Tyre Nichols, weeks after an encounter with police led to his death and sparked an outcry across the country.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights leader, will eulogize Mr. Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker who was pulled over by police on Jan. 7. Body-camera footage released by the city showed Mr. Nichols was repeatedly struck by officers. He died in a Memphis hospital three days later.

Safety shouldn’t be a choice between rampant crime and violent overpolicing. Memphis thought it might have had an answer. But Tyre Nichols’ death shows how it spiraled out of control.

SCORPION hit the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, in late 2021 in unmarked cars, some without standard-issue dashboard cameras.

The police crime-suppression unit, divided into four, 10-person teams, racked up hundreds of arrests in months. It targeted suspected drug dens, gun smugglers, and reckless drivers who had grown brash during the pandemic.

Three EMTs who responded to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were fired Monday after an internal investigation, the Memphis Fire Department said Monday.

Robert Long, JaMichael Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker were found to have violated multiple department policies and protocols in their patient response to Nichols on Jan. 7, the fire department said in a statement.