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The Atlantic employees author David A. Graham has been pondering and writing about Memphis’s policing disaster for a number of months now. This previous weekend, he went again to survey the aftermath of launched video footage of Tyre Nichols’s deadly beating by cops. David is at work on a narrative about the place police reform goes from right here, and I referred to as him as we speak to speak a bit about what he noticed and heard over the weekend, and the way Memphis’s policing technique led to tragedy.
However first, listed below are three new tales from The Atlantic.
Not Sufficient
Isabel Fattal: You had been in Memphis over the weekend. What did you hear from residents of the town?
David A. Graham: The sense I obtained from folks in Memphis is that they’re glad the town moved so shortly to fireplace these officers, and so they’re glad the district legal professional moved so shortly to prosecute. However it’s not sufficient. They wish to know extra in regards to the incident. It’s unclear why Tyre Nichols was pulled over. They wish to see motion towards the opposite officer who tased Tyre Nichols and who has been relieved from responsibility however has not been fired. They wish to know who else was concerned. We’ve seen the SCORPION [Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods] unit that these officers had been members of disbanded, however they wish to see the broader organized-crime unit within the division disbanded. They usually need this to not occur once more. Town is saying the correct issues, however the trick is avoiding it sooner or later.
Isabel: You wrote final Friday that “one of many extra exceptional issues in regards to the video is that it exists.” To what extent is police exercise surveilled in Memphis?
David: Typically, once we study these incidents, it’s due to bystander video. However on this case, so far as we all know, no bystanders had been concerned. Folks didn’t come out of the homes round there. I went to the scene on Saturday, and it’s a quiet suburban road. However there’s something referred to as SkyCop, which is that this surveillance system throughout Memphis. It’s actually eerie: There are these twinkling blue lights 15 or so ft off the bottom, and there are surveillance cameras, which I believe are laborious to overlook, whether or not you’re a civilian or a police officer. And these officers had been sporting physique cams.
We’ve seen instances the place officers have tried to control physique cams. However there’s no effort to cover this. Within the video, there’s nothing that means they thought they made a mistake, both morally or as a matter of police work.
Isabel: Throughout your previous reporting in Memphis, you heard from residents in locations with excessive crime that the town is concurrently under-policed and over-policed. Are you able to discuss a bit about that?
David: If you’ve obtained a spike in violent crime—as you probably did in Memphis, and in a variety of different American cities in 2020—one of many options that a variety of departments flip to is hot-spot policing, the place you set a variety of officers in an space the place there’s crime. We all know from expertise in a variety of cities that hot-spot policing can drive down crime, however the query is how it does that.
A method you are able to do it’s by sweeping lots of people up—simply arresting lots of people, stopping folks on pretext, and seeing what you will get them on. That will cease crime, however it additionally creates animosity between residents and the police division. It seeks out folks for issues that don’t have anything to do with public security, and due to the place a variety of this hot-spot policing is finished, it results in a variety of Black males being arrested.
So in Memphis, this SCORPION unit was created in 2021 to cope with violent crime and the kinds of public-safety points that residents are complaining about. And what you see them doing as an alternative, on this case, is terrorizing and killing a citizen who on the worst was driving unsafely, from what we all know. So I believe it’s a transparent instance of under-policing and over-policing. They’re not doing something to cease violent crime, however they are abusing residents.
Isabel: You wrote final week, “The issue with a troubled division like Memphis’s adopting a instrument like hot-spot policing is that tradition tends to conquer techniques.” Why was hot-spot policing a mistake for Memphis?
David: When you have a police division that has a historical past of extreme pressure, like Memphis’s does, and also you institute a brand new tactic like hot-spot policing however you don’t do something to vary the underlying tradition of the division, then you definately’re going to get abuses in hot-spot policing.
Within the aftermath of Nichols’s dying, the mayor of Memphis mentioned that an outdoor overview will assist decide whether or not this can be a matter of coaching or a matter of tradition. You’ll be able to’t watch a video like that and assume, Effectively, if solely they’d been educated higher. No police officer is educated to savagely beat somebody like that. It’s not that they wanted to be informed that. It’s that there’s an issue with the tradition.
Isabel: How do you assume Nichols’s dying may have an effect on the nationwide dialog about police reform?
David: Every of those conditions does have its personal distinctive elements and native context. However the nationwide horror that we now have seen displays not solely simply how visceral this video is but in addition the truth that we’re aware of this.
It’s at all times laborious for me to know when one among these tales will change into a nationwide story. I believe this one did partly as a result of the video is so visceral, but in addition as a result of persons are primed for this. They’ve seen so many of those instances. And I believe each time we now have one among them, it’s a reminder that there was a second after George Floyd’s dying when folks had been unified on this and there have been some modifications, however there’s nonetheless a variety of work to do to make it possible for persons are experiencing simply policing across the nation.
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Night Learn
The Existential Surprise of House
By Marina Koren
Of all of the moons within the photo voltaic system, Saturn’s largest satellite tv for pc may be probably the most extraordinary. Titan is enveloped in a thick, hazy environment, and liquid methane rains gently from its sky, tugged downward by a fraction of the gravity we really feel on Earth. The methane types rivers, lakes, and small seas on Titan’s floor. Beneath the frigid floor, composed of ice as laborious as rock, is much more liquid, an entire ocean of plain outdated H2O.
The wildest half about Titan—the most effective half, maybe—is that one thing may very well be dwelling there. NASA is at the moment engaged on a mission, referred to as Dragonfly, that may journey to the faraway moon and seek for potential indicators of alien life, previous and current. A helicopter will fly round and examine the native chemistry, checking whether or not circumstances could also be proper for microbes to come up. Hypothetical Titanian life-forms might resemble the earthly varieties we’re aware of or be one thing else fully, feeding on methane compounds the best way we depend on oxygen.
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Hear. Gloria, the radically inoffensive new album by the pop singer Sam Smith.
Play our day by day crossword.
P.S.
For a extra detailed evaluation of the Memphis Police Division’s troubled historical past, David recommends this current New York Instances opinion essay by the Memphis-based journalist Emily Yellin. “One purpose I needed to give attention to Memphis after I began writing about it was that it’s actually just like a variety of cities but in addition has its personal distinctive traits,” David informed me. Yellin’s article helps situate this current tragedy throughout the metropolis’s specific historical past.
— Isabel
Kelli María Korducki contributed to this article.
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