City employees have faced consequences
in the wake of Nichols killing.
Of the latest, two EMTs
and a fire department
lieutenant have now been fired.
So that's three in the fire department
and a seventh Memphis
officer has been relieved of duty.
Last week,
five of those seven officers were charged
with second degree murder and assault
for Nichols death.
CNN's Ryan
Young has the latest from Memphis.
Also here,
CNN chief
law enforcement
and intelligence analyst John Miller.
Ryan, first, the discrepancies
between the video
and this initial report.
Talk to us about them.
Yeah,
something that we're still digging into.
And of course, you guys
can ask John about this later.
But I've been talking to Memphis
Police Department officers today,
and they've been telling me that
when you file an initial police report,
you also include a use of force,
part of the report as well.
So if you had to escalate
maybe go
hands on or use
some type of force,
you usually include
that in the police report.
But these discrepancies
kind of stand out to us
as we've
watched this video over and over.
We'll take you through some of them.
It says Nichols was an aggravated
assault suspect.
So that stood out to us as well.
And then he said it was
he was sweating profusely
and irate upon exiting the vehicle.
As we watch that video,
you saw the officers
actually approached that car
with a lot of force.
And then it says Nichols grabbed
for Detective Martin's gun.
And then Martin listed as a victim.
In this case, of course,
we don't see that initial pool
for any officer's weapon.
And then says Nichols pulled
on an officer's duty belt.
And there is no mention of the kicking
or punching of him.
And again, after talking to an officer
who's worked
in this police department
for quite some time,
he said that would be listed
in that incident. Report at some time.
Of course,
not only have
we called to see the full report
that was initially put in.
We also have asked for that seventh
officer name.
It hasn't been released just yet.
So there's still a lot of questions
surrounding this initial report
that has come out.
Okay.
So, John, are discrepancies
like this in police reports common?
Well,
there's nothing common
about this incident.
Because the report is
does not reflect what happened.
So it's more than discrepancies.
But, Alisyn,
it seems
as if they have built into the narrative
a series of justifications.
And it's interesting
that you hear them mouth
some of those
at the end of the beating on tape
as if they're building a story that
that goes somewhere
other than we dragged
the guy out of a car
and started beating him
and didn't stop
until he was in a in a fatal car.
But he grabbed the gun.
I think he grabbed the gun.
I think he grabbed
like it
starts to take on a life of its own
even more than that.
Because when you heard them talking
and that scene we just played,
one of them says,
you know, I said, hey, brother.
And you know,
he came out of the car and bam.
Now we've all seen that first video
right there screaming at him
before he's ever out of the car
and he's saying, what did I do?
What did I do?
I'm getting on the ground. Okay. Okay.
So they're they're constructing
they're constructing a false narrative
that is false from the beginning,
not just the elements
they add at the end, but they all
they also know
that they're being recorded,
that there's a body cam,
that both is picking up the story,
but also has the incident
that doesn't reconcile
with what they're explaining.
Great question. But it cuts both ways.
They know that the body camera
is going to be blocked.
There's all kinds of chaos and confusion,
not everything is going to be recorded.
So you can see it plainly.
So they are building that narrative
while they are still recording
because they know
they're still recording.
So they're trying to say.
When you look at this tape,
here's the parts you might have missed.
Here's something that they didn't
account for,
the pull camera, which captured it all.
Clearly,
there's something else here
in the report.
They say
a lieutenant
and they name him
and give his
his shield number
made the scene indicating he was there.
This is the first time we have ever heard
about a supervisor
to ranks up having been present.
So there's going to be a real question
about, okay,
this lieutenant got there
when and was there for what part of this.
Brian, we know
his funeral is scheduled for tomorrow.
So what do we know about that?
Yeah, we do know that tomorrow
Breonna Taylor's mother will be here.
George Floyd's brother will be here.
We just learned
the vice
president will be here at the funeral
tomorrow.
Put all this together
with a news conference
that's supposed to happen
just in the next few hours.
So much still happening here
and obviously with this investigation.
People asking questions about that
initial incident report
and just how many times
this Scorpion unit was involved
in incidents
that haven't been reported
or gone this far.
Okay.
Ryan Young, John Miller,
thank you both very much.
Joining us now, Patrice
Robinson, a member of the Memphis
City Council.
Councilwoman, thank you for your time.
I want to pick up
where that conversation left off.
We know now that there were
there are two additional officers
who have been relieved of duty.
We know one of them.
His name was released.
The other was not
of this
Preston Hemphill, the sixth officer.
He was recorded saying, I hope they stomp
his ass. He's not been fired.
Can any of the officers
stay on board
with the Memphis Police Department,
any of the officers who were involved
in this this incident
I do believe
that we're going
to be as transparent as possible.
And I know that we're going to be fair
as possible.
But I don't see
anybody on that street at the time.
Should work for the police department.
Now, I may be wrong.
The law might say something differently.
But if they were there
and they didn't intervene,
they're all in the same boat together.
Hmm. Yeah.
The question is, can trust be restored
if that Officer Hempel
shows up on a scene and local people know
that he's the person who said,
I hope they stop his ass.
What degree of trust and confidence
will they have
that they will be
taken care of
within the bounds of the law?
Do you have
a concern about the lack of disclosure
of these additional officers
being relieved of duty?
Not on the first day when it happened,
but several weeks later.
I have a concern
starting from the beginning
of what we saw on the video.
And you have made it very clear,
I heard in your last segment
that when they approached him in his car,
they just snatched him out.
We have no idea.
Nobody knows why he was that.
They said it was a trap violation.
We don't know that for sure either.
Yes, I am concerned.
I'm concerned
that all the information
did not come at the same time.
But I know the community
have been pressuring
the police department
to issue everything they can and know
that they're doing investigations.
We want to make sure
that we were
as transparent as possible
and we made sure
that we were getting information
that two individuals as it I mean,
as soon as we could
get it out of the office.
Now, we knew everybody
that looked at the video,
knew the other people were involved
we didn't know how
they were going to be addressed.
But now we are seeing that
they are being addressed.
And my concern at this point is
what are we going to do
and what will the law say
that we need to do moving forward?
And how will the D.A.
plug in at this point?
So, obviously,
there's a question of culture there,
not only within this now
disbanded Scorpion unit,
but these officers
were wearing body cameras.
They were in a neighborhood
there could have been cell phone cameras.
The pole camera was there.
And that didn't
deter or discourage
any of the action that we saw.
On the question of culture,
is Chief Davis
the right person to continue
to lead this department
as it tries
to shift to obviously a different culture
I believe she is the right person
to help them shift
to a different culture,
because you can't take people
that are already in the culture
and utilize them
to change the culture
that they're used to.
It really doesn't make a lot of
sense, but we don't have
a lot
of bad players but we
know we do have something
and we don't have as many as
the public probably thinks.
And my heart goes out
not just to their family,
but to the families of all the officers,
knowing that their fathers,
their brothers,
their that their own people are there
each and every day working.
And they want to see their fathers
at the end of the day
or their husbands
at the end of the day or their brothers
at the end of the day.
And I do believe that Chief Davis
has moved us in the right direction.
And there was nothing
she could have done to have stopped
what happened on that day.
It was tragic.
Those men make very poor decisions
from the beginning of the video
that I saw all the way to the end.
All right.
Memphis City
Councilwoman Patrice Robinson,
thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.