Official harassment and aggravated assault.Two of the five former Memphis police officers arrested. In the slaying of 29-year-old Tyree Nichols had been. On the job for several years and the others for no more than six years. And some of the officers were part of a new anti-violence unit called Scorpion. Which stands for Street Crime Operations to Restore Peace. In Our Neighborhoods, prosecutors confirmed.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III. Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith were fired Jan. 20. After an administrative investigation found they violated the department’s policy. On use of force. They were charged Thursday with second-degree murder. Two counts of official misconduct, two counts of aggravated kidnapping. One count of official oppression and one count of aggravated assault.
Like Nichols, all five former officers were black.
After the brutal beating on January 7. Nichols was hospitalized in critical condition and died three days later.
Police initially said Nichols fled on foot during a traffic. Stop for reckless driving and a “confrontation” ensued. When officers attempted to detain him.
Camera footage could not “substantiate” the reckless driving claim.
A nervous nation braced for the prospect of mass protests. Against police brutality as Memphis officials prepared. To release video of the fatal beating that Nichols’ mother, Rowan Wells. Had already described as “horrific.”
Here’s what we know about the five Memphis police officers. At the center of this latest storm: Demetrius Haley, 30
Before Haley joined the Memphis Police Department in August 2020. He served as a corrections officer for the Shelby County Department of Corrections. And in a 2016 lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Tennessee. Sledge nearly eight years earlier.
Haley and another officer punched him in the face, and a third threw him face first into the sink, Sledge said. “I blacked out after that,” Sledge said in the suit.
The case was dismissed in 2018 after a judge ruled. That Sledge had not properly served one of the defendants with a summons. Sledge, who filed the lawsuit without the help of a lawyer. Said he was in federal custody at the time and was unable to complete all the paperwork.
“Everybody was proud of him, proud that he was doing what he loved to do,” said Diane Thompson.
Bean before worked at a fast-food restaurant in Mississippi and also worked for AT&T in Memphis. According to his LinkedIn profile.
From 2016 to 2020, Bean studied criminal justice. And law enforcement at the University of Mississippi and interned. With the campus police department, according to his profile. Which described him as a bachelor of science majoring in criminal justice.
At Bethel University as “one of the best brothers ever.”
Joshua Harper, now a pastor in Missouri. Said he followed Martin on social media after he left Christian College in McKenzie, Tenn. She said Martin posted a lot about her daughter. He said the man depicted in court papers “is not the person I know.
That anything can happen when someone has power and authority,” Harper said.
Martin was a tight end on the Bethel University football team.
Desmond Mills Jr., 32, was nicknamed “Bucks.” When he played football for West Virginia State University. Said Kip Shaw, one of his former coaches.
Shaw, who coached him in 2009 and 2010, said Mills was a popular and hard-working member of the team. Who played center and offensive guard.
I’ve been coaching a long time and you never know. I said to my wife, ‘That guy played for us at West Virginia State.'”
He listed his hometown of Hartford. Connecticut on the WVSU football team’s 2012 roster. He spent his formative years in a northern suburb called Bloomfield.
“We can confirm that one of the officers. Desmond Mills Jr. – is a 2008 graduate of Bloomfield High School,” school officials said in a statement.
