A tribute tinged with anger. The funeral of Tyre Nichols, a young African-American whose fatal beating by black police officers shocked the United States, took place on Wednesday in the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris.
After hugging Tyre Nichols’ mother for a long time in the Memphis church where this tribute was held, Kamala Harris had harsh words for the officers who beat him up as he shouted that he had nothing done and called for help.
“Didn’t he have the right to be safe?” “, launched the vice-president. “Here is a family who lost their son and brother after an act of violence” perpetrated by “people responsible for protecting them”, and “this violent act was not intended to ensure public safety”, she hammered in front of the crowd.
Tire Nichols, 29, was arrested on Jan. 7 by officers from a special unit in Memphis, in the southern United States, for a simple traffic violation, police say. But beaten relentlessly, so much so that he had become unrecognizable according to his family, he died three days later in hospital.
VIDEO. Fatal arrest of Tire Nichols: the video that shocks the United States
Tyre Nichols was “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being gone too soon”, said at the opening of the service the Reverend J. Lawrence Turner at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. “We will eventually win,” he assured.
A strong symbol, a brother of George Floyd, a black man in his forties whose death in 2020 under the knee of a white police officer had triggered massive anti-racism demonstrations, was present, as was the mother of Breonna Taylor.
This icon of the “Black Lives Matter” movement (Black lives matter), 26-year-old African-American, was shot dead in the middle of the night by the police in her apartment in Kentucky in 2020. And it is the Reverend Al Sharpton, figure of the struggle for civil rights, who gave the funeral oration.
Five police officers charged
A sign of the attention given by the White House to this affair, President Joe Biden himself spoke last week with the parents of Tire Nichols to salute “their courage and their strength”, a few hours before the publication of the video of his ordeal at the hands of the police.
The unbearable images of the arrest and beatings inflicted on the young man by the agents were broadcast, without cuts, by the largest channels in the country, raising fears of a social conflagration to the authorities.
The five police officers involved were fired and charged with murder. The “Scorpion Unit” to which they belonged, and whose mission was to reduce the number of illegal activities in sensitive neighborhoods by deploying more police there, was dismantled. Three firefighters were dismissed in connection with the facts and two other police officers suspended.
President Biden plans to receive members of the caucus bringing together African-American lawmakers at the White House on Thursday to “discuss legislation on police reform and other shared priorities,” said Olivia Dalton, a spokeswoman. of the executive. That same caucus invited RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, Tyre Nichols’ mother and stepfather, to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Feb. 7 in Congress in Washington.
