The Daily - The Police Unit That Was Supposed to Keep Memphis Safe

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

This episode contains descriptions of violence. The death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, at the hands of officers in Memphis last month has intensified calls for fundamental reform in policing. Those calls were echoed yesterday by President Biden, who hosted Mr. Nichols’s parents at the State of the Union address.Today, we hear about a Times investigation into the special team of officers, known as the Scorpion unit, that is accused of killing Mr. Nichols.Guest: Mike Baker, the Seattle bureau chief and a national correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: For 14 months, officers from the high-profile Scorpion unit patrolled Memphis with an air of menace.City leaders had praised the Scorpion unit as a key strategy for fighting crime. Now they are trying to assess whether it was flawed from the start.The unit has been disbanded, but Memphis wasn’t the only city to turn to specialized police teams.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. The death of Tyree Nichols at the hands of police in Memphis last month has intensified calls for fundamental reform in policing. What happened to Tyree in Memphis happens too often. We have to do better. All the way up to President Biden, who hosted Nichols' parents at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night

and demanded that Congress finally take action. Let's come together to finish the job on police reform. Do something. Do something. Today, my colleague Mike Baker on what a Times investigation has uncovered about the special unit of police officers accused of killing Nichols and what it tells us about the challenges of preventing police brutality. It's Wednesday, February 8th. Mike, for the past week or so, you and our colleagues have been investigating this special unit of police officers in Memphis,

the Scorpion Unit, whose members have been charged with murdering Tyree Nichols. So tell us the story that you've uncovered about this unit, starting with how it was that it came into being. Yeah, so this was a specialized crime-fighting unit focused on hotspot neighborhoods where the city had seen high rates of crime, high rates of violent crime, and wanted to take some extra steps to address it. These types of units, these hotspot units, we've seen them over decades in cities around the country, in Los Angeles and New York and Atlanta and Chicago. And they come with a whole bunch of different names, Red Dog and SOS and

Apex and Titan. And they really tend to come and go. I mean, they come when there's a crime problem in the city, when there are police leaders or political leaders clamoring for solutions to some sort of crime spike or crime concerns. And then they tend to go when there's a scandal that emerges, when there's police brutality, when there's a sense that they're operating with impunity, when there's concerns that they're racially profiling people and targeting people who are black or brown. Right. There becomes an understanding over time that these special units tend to bend or break the rules for all kinds of reasons, especially because they are given this mandate to solve a crisis and to be aggressive in doing so.

Yeah, I mean, it's the concern that we keep seeing over and over again about the aggressiveness of the tactics and whether they're racially profiling. And that is particularly the case after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, when these cities, including New York. Make no mistake, this is a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city. In Portland. We're going to dissolve the gun violence reduction team and the transit specialty units. Start reassessing whether this is the type of unit they want in their city. So by 2020, these units have really fallen out of favor. Yeah, it really seemed like there was this seismic shift where these units were something of policing of the past.

of policing of the past. But soon after, by 2021, cities around the country were seeing homicide numbers rising dramatically. Some were headed toward new records, and that was the case in Memphis where murders reached over 300, setting a new record. And around the city, there was a sense of unease

about this level of violent crime and what to do about it. And it's during this time when the city is looking around for solutions. Memphis City Council voting 12 to 1 to make C.J. Davis Memphis' next police chief. That Memphis brings in a new police chief, Sarah Lynn Davis. We should celebrate that we are breaking ceilings, but at the same time, I stay focused really on the work that I know I know how to do. So Davis is the first Black woman police chief

in this majority Black city. You know, she has this background of someone who is both tough on crime, but in recent years had been touting the need for police reform. Sometimes it helps to have a different perspective or a fresh set of eyes on a situation. She started in Atlanta in the 80s. And when she's there, she rises to oversee actually one of these specialized crime fighter units, the Red Dog Unit there. And that's a unit that goes through a series of scandals of its own. It gets disbanded

after allegations that it was abusive in its practices. But then later on, she's in Durham, North Carolina, where she's pursuing more of a reformer role, a reformer reputation. She starts getting body cameras for officers, ending stops for minor traffic violations. And by 2020, after the killing of George Floyd. Something deep seems to be happening in the country. So what do you say to those protesters who believe that policing in America is plagued by systemic racism? Davis is going on TV and calling for police reform.

I believe that we need to have sweeping changes and police reform. We don't want to see this anymore. She's also doing it in front of the U.S. Senate. In the George Floyd case, I think something was very apparent to the world that there was a disconnect between the human being and the officer.

The duty to intervene was a miserable failure. The culture of policing has to change. So in many ways, she seems ideal for Memphis in this moment because she's been a police leader who has been both a tough on crime person and a police reformer at a time when both of those are seen as required. Yeah, I think that's how Memphis leaders saw it. When the mayor announced her hiring. I'm convinced that the public and the officers are all going to want to be on her team. He emphasized that not only does she have a vision for reducing violent crime, but she has a vision for building relationships in the communities she serves.

I would expect her to bring some fresh eyes to the old challenges we've had. So what happens once she takes the job? So Chief Davis takes the job in the middle of 2021. She moves into downtown Memphis. And what she starts seeing and hearing is pretty shocking to her. Night before last, we had reports of drag racing, you know, 20, 30 vehicles, drag racing, not just on our freeways, but in the inner city. You know, late at night, she's hearing street racing around her home,

sort of like the buzzing vehicles and the squealing tires. I have experienced it and it's alarming and we really feel that it's important for us to do something about it. And meanwhile, the violent crime number as elsewhere around the country, it's still going up. So by the end of the year, she's talking about the need to do something new, that the old ways of policing in the city were not working, and she wanted to see more aggressive action. Some of the various violent crimes that we've seen in the city of Memphis requires more than just regular patrol.

It requires individuals who are assigned to specific units that actually target, look for, identify individuals that are in stolen vehicles, because many of the crimes are being committed with stolen vehicles. And what is her specific plan? So in November of 2021, she creates the Scorpion Unit. And it stands for the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. Hmm. Basically, she creates a special unit.

Hmm. Basically, she creates a special unit. Yeah. The idea is that the city's going to look at their crime data to say, you know, these are the neighborhoods where we're seeing the highest levels of crime and highest levels of violent crime, and really flood the zone, send an influx of officers into those neighborhoods to confront the violent crime. So even though she has been hired as a reformer, and even though special units had very recently fallen out of favor for their problematic history, she's now turning to this very tactic as the answer to crime in Memphis. Exactly that, and giving it a bit of an intimidating name along the way.

Scorpion. This unit addresses violent crimes such as homicides, aggravated assaults, robberies and carjackings. I mean, it launches with 40 officers designed to go out in different groups across the city. Each team consists of an auto theft task force and gang investigative and crime suppression units. It's a pretty big commitment of resources and it's a pretty big part of what the city's vision is for combating violent crime. Since its inception in this past October. And right away they are touting the accomplishments of this unit, talking about the number of arrests, the number of vehicles seized, the number of guns seized, what kind of drugs they're encountering along the way.

We must remove from our streets those predators who perpetrate violence and use guns to harm and rob others. The city's really celebrating what this unit is doing out on the streets. So does that mean that the Scorpion Unit reduced violent crime in Memphis as it was designed to do? Well, violent crime does go down in 2022, but it's not clear whether the Scorpion unit is influencing that trend at all. The city touts it as such, that they see Scorpion as playing a factor in that. But we can now see that violent crime was trending down nationwide.

And my colleagues and I, when we were investigating, we found something else, which is that during this time period, the unit was gaining a reputation in the community, not for lowering violence, but for inflicting violence of its own. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So Mike, what did you and our colleagues end up finding out about how exactly the Scorpion unit operated day to day? What we found from talking to people around the city was that this unit had a really menacing presence that terrified people with its tactics and often left people feeling unsafe. Well, talk us through that. I mean, how did you come to that understanding about this unit? So we did several things here. We spent a lot of time looking

through court records, examining the statements of the officers themselves and how they described encounters in the communities. And we talked to a number of people who both were arrested or had encounters with the Scorpions and also people who observed encounters around their homes. And what patterns emerged from that reporting? Several things emerged. First was that the Scorpion unit was arresting a disproportionate number of black people. 90% of the arrests we looked at were of black people, which is a lot because Memphis's population is only 65% black. Right, a pretty big gap. Another thing is that a lot of these stops begin with really minor observations. You know, a cracked windshield, a broken taillight, or claims that officers whiffed marijuana. So not stops that begin with an allegation of a violent crime.

Right. Not even close. Well, give us some examples of these kinds of encounters that you're describing involving the Scorpion Unit. So one of them is DeVitas Collier. He's a 32-year-old black man who was going out on Memorial Day weekend to get beer for his father. And on his way out, he's driving and gets pulled over by members of the Scorpion Unit. of the Scorpion unit. The officers say in their statement, they initially started taking a closer look because they saw a driver who wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

Collier says everyone in the vehicle was wearing a seatbelt. And the traffic stop escalates over time. There's a lengthy discussion as Collier's trying to understand why these officers would pull him over and be bothering him. And the officers, he says, you know, they have their hands on their holsters, and one of them starts pulling out a baton and whips it out, he says, like a lightsaber. And Collier says he's still trying to figure out why in the world they are pulling him over and bothering him. And they eventually pull him out of the car. And Collier says he makes the decision that it's time

to run. One, he said he had a warrant stemming from a previous domestic violence complaint. But also, he was looking around and seeing that there were not many people around on this roadway, and he was worried that there were not enough witnesses to see what was going to take place next. He fears for his safety at the hands of these Scorpion Unit officers. Yeah, he sees them getting increasingly aggressive, and he wants people there to witness what's going to happen. So he decides to run down toward a convenience store, and this is where he feels a little more comfortable. He sees people around, familiar faces, and it's here where the Scorpion officers catch up to him and bring him to the ground. Hey, man. Stay calm down, bro.

And we can see from a bystander video they released some pepper spray into his face. And we can see a certain level of outrage from him that he had already been subdued. What's the point of pepper spraying him then? Chill out,

pop. Chill out. The officers arrest him, charge him with several counts, including evading arrest, but also for that original violation of the seatbelt law. Mm-hmm. So this is a case where a very minor offense, not wearing a seatbelt allegedly, leads to a pretty significant confrontation that, according to Collier, makes him fear for his life and flee and ends with him being pepper sprayed while on the ground. Fractions, supposed infractions that suddenly turn into an escalating encounter and a lot of fear.

And that fits a pattern that we heard from others as well. I mean, another one of them was Demetia Wilburn. And what happened to him? So Wilburn spoke with my colleague, Cassie Bracken, and describes how he was connecting with some friends at an apartment complex. You know, I heard from your brother, his account, but it'd be great to hear kind of what your experience was and what you remember from that night. They were actually parked and getting equipment out of the vehicle to shoot a music video. At the time, officers say that they were patrolling this complex as part of an anti-trespassing campaign and went over to check out this car. Wilburn says they didn't have their sirens on, their lights on.

They didn't announce themselves. And all of a sudden, they surrounded the car and they're looking into the car. After he gets out, he says officers throw him up against the vehicle, begin searching him. He grabs me by the top and the bottom of my shirt. I have my hand in the earth at this moment. You had your hands in the air. You immediately put your hands up? Yes, ma'am. I immediately put my hands up. The officers say they can smell marijuana, so they begin searching the car also.

Did they find any, did they take anything from you? The officers searching the car find what they say is an ounce of marijuana and a loaded gun. Wilburn himself receives a citation for possession of a controlled substance. Hmm. But the police discovery of the marijuana and the gun are found after Wilburn is, he says, thrown against the car very aggressively. And all this begins with a kind of vague pretense that perhaps the people in this car are trespassing. Again, a rather minor, nonviolent potential infraction. Yeah, that's right.

And it's the kind of thing I heard also from another person in town, Montarius Harris. Me and my older cousin, we was just sitting in the car talking. I was just telling him about my day or whatever. Harris's case was just last month, and he was also in an apartment complex in a parking lot. A group of guys approached my car with guns out. They had on hoodies and ski masks, and one of them was yelling at me to get out the car,

and the other one was yelling at me to get out the car. He was other one was yelling at me to get out the car, and he was going to shoot. Like, I didn't know if they was trying to rob me or take my car or, you know, I didn't know what their intentions was. And officers from the Scorpion unit suddenly surround his vehicle wearing balaclavas and hoodies and not announcing who they are. I was real scared. I didn't really know who they were. They never said we're the police or we're any type of law enforcement. They were just telling me they were going to shoot me and trying to force me to get out the car. He's terrified. He doesn't see any sign that there's security or police. He thinks maybe he's getting carjacked. Maybe he's getting robbed. He doesn't know what's about to take place.

And then I proceed to get out the car. And when I got out the car, they approached me and one guy grabbed me. They just started roughing me up, punching me and hitting me and stuff. He says they throw him to the ground. They scrape his face on the pavement. He also said he was punched. You know, one of them was bending my arm. The other guy, he took my head and slammed it to the concrete.

I was like screaming for my cousin, for him to come outside. I was just hoping he would hear me. I kept screaming his name. He starts screaming for help and says a bunch of people began coming out of the nearby apartment complex. And he thinks that that is possibly the reason that the violence he was dealing with from these officers actually came to an end. So how does Harris's encounter with the Scorpion unit come to an end? Well, he was arrested for possession of marijuana, which is a charge, you know, his lawyer denies, and also for possession of a handgun,

which he said actually belonged to his cousin that he was connecting with that night. And by the end of the incident, officers are taking him down to the jail. And I had a blackened eye, swollen face. I had a gash in my forehead from my head being slammed to the concrete. And from that point, they had to take me to the hospital. Harris says the nurse looks him over, sees his swollen face and the scrapes on his face,

and decides this isn't the place for him. He actually first needs to go to the hospital. Mike, it feels notable that in a couple of these cases, guns were found. But from everything you're describing, guns were not why these men were pulled over. They were pulled over for these much more minor suspected infractions. And the tactics of the Scorpion Unit became much more aggressive in pursuit of those alleged minor infractions. So I wonder how we should think about that.

Yeah, that's right. In some of these cases where officers report finding guns, it certainly did not begin that way. They were not looking for guns or they did not have evidence of a gun in someone's possession. Mike, it really strikes me that the three encounters that you just described involving

the Scorpion unit, they sound a lot like what eventually happens with this same unit to Tyree Nichols, right? Yeah, absolutely. And one of the remarkable things here is that the Montarius Harris case, his beating was on January 4th, and the stop with Tyree Nichols was just three days later. After I was released from the facility,

I got home and my dad, he was just telling me, you know, how lucky I was because how they beat me up and how it could have been worse. And then a couple days later, he sent me a link to Tyree Nichols and the five officers had brutally beaten him. And I was reading the guy's names. And as I'm reading the names, I could hear these same names from the night.

And I'm like, these are the same guys that beat me up. And not only that, but the exact same officers that stopped Montarius Harris were involved in stopping Tyree Nichols. I was just watching Tyree's video and it was like, it looked like he was screaming for somebody, for his mom. And, you know, I was just thinking about myself screaming for my cousin, but nobody could hear him. So nobody would have been able to hear me. You know, I might not have been as lucky. And as we know, the Tyree Nichols case was a traffic stop that officers came in unmarked vehicles. We can see in the body camera video that level of aggression that others have described where they're yelling and they're throwing him down on the ground, even as Tyree Nichols is trying to talk in a calm voice,

almost trying to calm the officers down. Right. And you can see how this sort of minor stop suddenly escalates with the officers' aggression into something much more serious. So what you found, you and our colleagues, Mike, in this investigation, really is that what happened to Tyree Nichols was not an exception when it comes to the Scorpion unit. But, in a way, something resembling standard practice for the unit. Something that had happened before many, many times.

Yeah, I think for some people in the community, this was just sort of a matter of time. And for some of these people who had encounters with Scorpion, they look at the Tyree Nichols video, the Tyree Nichols case, and think, that could have been me. How much did the city of Memphis, did this police chief, Davis, know about these cases that you and our colleagues found before Tyree Nichols died? Presumably, they have access to the same records you do. Yeah, I think this is still something we're trying to sort out. We talked to city council members who said they had no idea this kind of thing was going on,

and yet they were cheering on the idea of the Scorpion unit during that time period. And I think we have a lot of questions left for the mayor, for the police chief about how this unit was organized, how they were trained, what their mission was when they were sent out into the streets, what kind of complaints they were getting back, and how much these leaders knew about what was going on. Right. And I ask that question because

when the Memphis Police Department eventually shuts the Scorpion unit down after Tyree Nichols dies, it ends up being seen by many as the kind of decisive action that's required to confront problems with the police department, excesses, brutality. the reporting you and our colleagues have now done, that perception may change. And it may be the case that the city's leaders should have shut this unit down much earlier and that they knew or should have known that this unit was a problem a long time ago. Yeah, I think it remains unclear of who knew exactly what and when they knew it. But certainly when it comes to the mayor and the police chief, if they didn't know what was going on, the question would be why. Because there's plenty of people in Memphis who did know that this was going on and they could see it taking place in their neighborhoods. Mike, I'm thinking back to the start of our conversation

when this new police chief comes into Memphis and decides to create the Scorpion unit. You have to think that she believed, and perhaps it was naively, that a unit like this could be created and not fall into the pattern of excess and abuse that has defined special police units in the past. But clearly, that didn't happen. And history did repeat itself. Yeah, and Memphis isn't the only place that has stood up more of these units.

These cities that got rid of them in 2020 have started to bring them back in places like Denver and Portland and New York and Atlanta. And all these cities seem to think that there might be a new way of doing this and hoping that maybe this is a cycle that won't keep repeating itself. So despite everything we've learned through the decades and across all these cities, police departments are still trying to make these special units work

and still telling themselves that there's a responsible way to do it. Yeah, these teams don't seem to be going away. It's still a preferred strategy in a lot of cities, whether it's a good idea, whether it's not, a lot of cities, whether it's a good idea, whether it's not, whether anyone can figure out a way to prevent a cycle of police brutality from repeating itself again and again. Mike, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. On Tuesday, the Memphis Police Department revealed that one of the officers involved in the beating of Tyree Nichols used his personal cell phone to take a photograph of Nichols after the beating

as Nichols sat propped against a police car and later sent the photo to at least five people. That, the city said, was a violation of police department policy and reflected a pattern of behavior by the officers, all members of the Scorpion unit, that was, quote, blatantly unprofessional, including cursing at Nichols, laughing after his beating, and bragging about their involvement. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today. The death toll from the massive earthquake in Turkey has surpassed 11,000 people, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters of the past century. On Tuesday, thousands of rescue workers in both Turkey and Syria raced to find survivors as temperatures dipped below freezing, raising fears that those still stuck in the rubble could die from hypothermia. So far, more than 8,000 people

have been rescued in Turkey alone. And... Because the soul of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong, because the people of this nation are strong, the State of the Union is strong. During his State of the Union speech, his first since Republicans won control of the House, President Biden repeatedly invited Republicans and their new leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to work with him on the kind of bipartisan legislation that was passed during his first two years in office. Speaker, I don't want

to ruin your reputation, but I look forward to working with you. But Biden offered those Republicans no concessions and pointedly challenged them to embrace his program of raising taxes on the wealthy, banning assault weapons, and capping the cost of prescription drugs like insulin, proposals that are expected to be the foundation of Biden's re-election campaign. And to my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there's no reason we can't work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well. Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Michael Simon Johnson, Alex Stern, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Paige Cowett with help from John Ketchum,

contains original music by Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.