The body cam video shows the encounter starting with police shouting expletives at the subject and yanking him from his car. They follow that by beating him senseless, ignoring his cries for his mother, and taking their time before providing first aid as he ultimately drifts toward death.

If the footage sparking national outrage in the death of Black motorist Tyre Nichols in Memphis seems familiar, it’s a near-mirror image of the initial police encounter with George Floyd. And despite whatever police reform or therapeutic hand-wringing the nation has supposedly undergone since then, virtually nothing has changed, especially in the training and recruitment of officers in the first place.

I’ve written on these incidents for years, from Philando Castile to Floyd to Sandra Bland to names too many of us have already forgotten. The language in my reports is so similar that I may as well save time and outsource the next one to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence engine, programming it to insert the name of the next victim. Each time, I hear from police officials claiming they’ve improved the use of force protocols – now ostensibly focused on de-escalation techniques.

But that’s obviously crap. And it’s not just me saying it.

“Basically nothing has changed,” Maria Haberfeld, a professor and chairperson of the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice messaged me on Sunday. “I have been advocating for transformational change in police recruitment and training for over two decades now. Nobody is listening.” 

Haberfeld also served in a counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli Defense Forces and was later an Israeli National Police lieutenant. Going back to 2016, we’ve spoken several times about how officer behavior often impedes crime prevention and effective policing.

“As much as people say it’s about protection, the first thing that police officers learn about is the use of force. If things go the way police officers do not want them to go, they can use force,” she told me in an article for The Marshall Project.

She went on to identify recruitment of officers – a process that historically has tapped many with go-get-’em cowboy mentalities – as a needed change to achieving a cultural shift among police.

De-escalation protocols adopted by departments in recent years are pointless, Haberfeld said on Sunday, because “the best training will not help to change people with wrong attitudes and underdeveloped emotional and social intelligence.”

Of Memphis, she said: “The truth is that each time I see a horrific event like this I am getting more and more discouraged. The constant push for more cops rather than better cops will generate similar images over and over again. I hope somebody with power to change things in a transformational manner will wake up.”

Haberfeld added that politicians have pushed for diversity recruitment and implicit bias training as  panaceas to police abuse problems – a belief belied by the fact that the four officers involved in Nichols’ beating were Black. 

While I won’t argue against increasing racial diversity among police forces that have notoriously been bastions of American segregation, it certainly does no good to recruit Black bullies who specialize in beating up other Black people.

Or frankly, out-of-shape bullies, if the Memphis video is any indication. When Nichols manages to escape after the initial beating and is chased by police, you can hear one officer huffing and puffing for what seems like an eternity afterward. Another keeps asking for douses of water to rinse the errant pepper spray out of his eyes. Great work, Keystone Cops, and more evidence of how splendidly all that revised training for police officers is working out.

I say “officers,” by the way, and not “former officers,” a phrase that too many of my fellow journalists use inaccurately. Even if rogue cops are fired, that doesn’t change the fact that they were cops when they committed the infractions; the “former officer” didn’t kill anyone. Similarly, former soldiers do not commit atrocities against civilians, even if eventually drummed out of the army, and in my profession, a reporter fired for plagiarism or making stuff up isn’t a former journalist.

More than just semantics, the usage lets police departments off the hook for policies that accommodate and perpetuate bad behavior – such as whatever training results in an officer’s first words in an encounter being “Get out of the f-ing car!”

Because it isn’t former officers who are saying that, but the ones who are out there now.

The post Former Israeli cop on ‘former officers’ in Memphis and the failure of police reform appeared first on The Forward.

There has been so much talk lately about who the GOP nominee for the 2024 Presidential election might be. Everyone has a theory, and everybody is impatient to know. It’s still far too early to really get a sense of who might run and who might win, but I would like to break it down a bit with some of the names readers have suggested and other names that pundits have suggested.

Let’s start with Ron DeSantis. I’ve written before that I doubt he will be a contender. That doesn’t mean he won’t run. But the facts of the matter are DeSantis is utterly bereft of charisma.

He has a whiny voice, he has no personal charm, and he’s irritating as all hell. Plus, he would never be able to get the minority vote. I do not see his appeal outside of Florida. I think were he to run, he’d be eaten alive, and believe me, other nominees would pounce on him.

Ted Cruz. He might run. It would certainly be entertaining if he did. But basically, I think anyone reading this has a much better chance of becoming president than the most hated man in the Senate.

Josh Hawley. Never. The fist pump destroyed him as a politician, although he seems the last to know it.

Mike Pompeo. I bet he will run, and I also think he will not break one percent.

Chris Christie. See Pompeo.

Nikki Haley. See Pompeo.

Pence. His views are way too outside the mainstream, and Maga hates him, so it is very doubtful he’d even make it to one percent.

John Bolton. He’d be an excellent spoiler, would he not?

Governor Glen Youngkin. There was a time when he worried me but no longer. One thing about Youngkin is he has to stay out of the spotlight and not talk that much. The more he speaks, the more foolish he sounds.

Besides, he has now become wildly unpopular in Virginia, and I doubt we’ll be hearing much from him in the future.

Mitt Romney. Several of you have mentioned him, and I think he’d have a shot if the GOP were as they used to be — sane. But now Romney is hated by Maga for daring to vote for trump’s impeachment, so I doubt he could win the nomination.

Tim Scott. He may try. The problem is the GOP will, in all likelihood, not elect a woman or a minority.

So who does that leave? Lots of people. I think it will be someone not on this list. The one thing I’m certain of is it will be someone absolutely awful.

The post 2024 is already looking like a dumpster fire for the Republicans appeared first on Palmer Report.

Ukrainian troops carry rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles toward the city of Irpin in March 2022.

Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

• Following Russia’s 2014 attack, Ukraine’s military set out to improve and modernize its forces.
• Kyiv’s decisions during that period helped it hold off Moscow’s assault in late February 2022.

When Russia annexed Crimea and stoked a conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014, Ukraine’s military was in poor condition, with only 6,000 combat-ready troops out of a 140,000-strong force.

In the years that followed, Ukraine’s military underwent a period of preparation that helped it blunt the full-scale invasion that Russia launched in February 2022.

According to a report by the Royal United Services Institute assessing the first five months of the war, decisions made by Kyiv during those years modernized its hardware and enabled its troops to hold off Russia’s assault.

Artillery in recovery

Ukrainian troops fire a howitzer in the Zaporizhzhia Region in December 2022.

Dmytro Smoliyenko / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Recognizing Russia’s artillery capabilities, which caused roughly 90% of Ukraine’s casualties between 2014 and 2022, Kyiv strengthened its own artillery force, which was systematically reduced prior to 2014.

Ukraine created new artillery units that doubled its total strength by February 2022 and gave it “the largest artillery force in Europe after Russia,” according to the report.

Although Russian sabotage between 2014 and 2018 destroyed much of Ukraine’s artillery ammunition, when the full-scale invasion started, Ukraine still had enough ammunition “for just over six weeks” of high-intensity fighting, the report says.

Ukraine also modernized its artillery force by introducing US-made radars, equipping artillery units with drones for reconnaissance and targeting, and introducing an intelligent mapping system that reduced artillery units’ deployment time by 80%. Training for artillery troops was also intensified.

As a result, the report says, “the amount of time to destroy an unplanned target was reduced by two-thirds” and the time it took to open counter-battery fire shrunk by 90%.

Tanks and anti-tank capabilities

A tank turret is repaired at the Kyiv Panzer factory in August 2015.

NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Most of the 30 tank battalions — totaling about 900 tanks — that Ukraine had in 2022 were formed between 2014 and 2018, a period during which Ukraine added 500 tanks to its fleet.

However, Russia’s tanks still outnumbered Ukraine’s nearly four to one when the invasion started.

To compensate for that disadvantage, Ukraine’s military adapted its tank doctrine and started using tanks for indirect fire, like artillery pieces, with high-explosive fragmentation rounds.

To do this, Ukrainian tankers use “special guidance devices” and other modern technology along with “automated transmission of information to other tanks,” which made it possible to be highly accurate at ranges of up to 6 miles and reduced the timed to make corrections to fire coordinates down to a few seconds, according to the report.

A Ukrainian tank in the city of Slavyansk in July 2014.

GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images

“This technique blurs the line between tanks and artillery” and “allows tanks to concentrate fire over a wide area while they can manoeuvre without the protection and screening needed by artillery pieces,” the report says.

Many of the tanks that Ukraine fielded in the 2010s were older models that had been upgraded, as Kyiv lacked the funds for new tanks. At the beginning of the invasion, Russia’s tanks were generally better, with higher-quality protection and sighting systems and ability to engage targets from longer range, though those advantages “were less relevant” at shorter range, the report says.

While experts have said that attention on anti-tank guided missiles tends to overstate their role in halting Russia’s initial advance, Ukraine invested heavily in ATGMs after 2014, buying thousands of launchers and missiles and setting up the School of Anti-Tank Artillery to train troops on them.

While Western-made ATGMs were quickly delivered at the start of the war, maintenance issues and their limited numbers meant they weren’t the “primary means” of wearing down Russian forces, the RUSI report says.

The battle of the skies

A Ukrainian MIG-29 fighter jet at the Vasilkov air base in November 2016.

Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo

After 2014, Ukraine tried to modernize its air force, and when the invasion started, it had about 50 MiG-29s and 32 Su-27s, as well as a few Su-24s and Su-25s, but it was outmatched and outgunned by Russia’s Aerospace Force in every respect, according to RUSI.

Therefore, Ukrainian planners focused on survivability by training units to disperse aircraft from main bases to secondary airfields. Crews were also trained to maintain and repair combat-damaged planes under conditions they would face in the field.

As Ukrainian pilots were well aware of their aircraft’s limitations and of “the fearsome capabilities” of Russia’s anti-aircraft weapons, “they trained extensively for low-level flight over Ukrainian territory and were highly familiar with the exploitation of terrain to evade radar detection,” the RUSI report says.

A Russian Su-35 downed by Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region in April 2022.

Press service of the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff/Handout via REUTERS

Ukraine also prioritized its air-defense capabilities. Its radio engineering troops, tasked with warning of an air attack, “reorganised after 2014 to ensure they could detect targets at 300-400 km, and direct fighters and anti-aircraft missile troops against them,” the reports says. Those units also received better radars.

Thus, at the onset of the invasion, Ukraine had continuous radar coverage of its border with Russia and its own airspace, though its Black Sea coverage was “less extensive.”

Russia’s air force failed to account for those improvements, “leading to tactical errors in the employment of radio-electronic attack,” RUSI says.

Additionally, Ukrainian air-defense missiles forced Russian pilots to fly low, where they could be targeted by Ukrainian troops with modernized shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the report says.

Russian aircraft still have some technological advantages, but their operations are now mostly limited to airspace over Russian-controlled territory.

More and better-trained troops

Ukrainian troops outside the city of Debaltseve in the Donetsk region in December 2014.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian troops deployed to the Donbas region had developed “an intimate understanding of the battlefield” over the years and were able to prepare for Russian escalation.

At the tactical level, Ukrainian troops were “confident” they would be better prepared and trained than their adversaries, according to the RUSI report, which added that Ukrainian troops who had observed Russia’s treatment of Ukrainians in the occupied territory were “highly motivated” to prevent Moscow from taking more of it.

Yet, at the formation level, Ukrainian commanders were concerned about Russian artillery limiting their ability to maneuver and hitting their supply lines. This problem was exacerbated by a personnel shortage, which in turn meant Ukrainian forces were spread thin along the Donbas frontline.

Prior to 2022, Ukraine’s military had struggled to retain troops, but high turnover during those years meant Ukraine had a large pool of civilians with military training. To capitalize on that, the country created the Territorial Defense Force.

Recruits receive first-aid training during an exercise with Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force in February 2022.

Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The TDF was established in January 2022 and didn’t have time to receive heavy weapons and the necessary command-and-control mechanisms. While they were initially an “impediment in many cases,” Ukrainian commanders have sorted out many of those issues, and the TDF’s role has increased from “rear-area security to ground holding to contributing manoeuvre brigades to offensive operations,” the report says.

Manpower problems and limited equipment at the beginning of the war meant Kyiv had to make difficult decisions about which troops to deploy where. “The critical question therefore was whether the professional body of [Ukraine’s military] could hold for long enough for a wider mobilisation to bolster Ukraine’s defences,” the report adds.

Thanks to Ukraine’s years of preparation, those troops did hold long enough.

When the advancing Russians met the Ukrainian defenders early on February 24, they had been surprised by what their commanders in Moscow had ordered them to do, while Ukrainian troops “had been psychologically and practically preparing for this fight for eight years,” the report says. “The interaction between these variables would be decisive in determining the outcome of the first 72 hours of fighting.”

Constantine Atlamazoglou works on transatlantic and European security. He holds a master’s degree in security studies and European affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. You can contact him on LinkedIn.

Demonstrators protest in Memphis on Jan. 28, 2023 following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between Tyre Nichols and police.

Shameka Wilson for Insider

Bracing for chaos

MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Everybody knew the footage would be horrible.

In the 20 days between five police officers brutalizing 29-year-old Tyre Nichols less than 100 yards from his family’s home and the release of police body video on Friday showing the fatal attack, many in Memphis were bracing for violent protests.

The police chief pleaded for peace. Some businesses owners boarded up their storefronts and closed. After-school programs were cancelled and hotels hired armed security guards. Some residents told Insider they hunkered down all of Saturday expecting the worst.

In the past, protesters in Memphis and around the nation have taken to the streets after police violence, demanding the bare minimum — that they learn the name of the officer or officers responsible. 

But this time was different.

Within a week, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, and the Department of Justice had all launched investigations into the officers’ actions. 

On January 20, all five officers — all of them Black and members of the SCORPION anti-crime unit — were fired. 

On Thursday— 28 hours before the release of the video — they were charged with second-degree murder.

On Saturday, the unit was disbanded.

After the first night of peaceful protest in Memphis, more families brought their children out to demand change.

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz/

“We have never seen swift justice like this,” attorney Ben Crump said at a Friday press conference at Memphis’ Mount Olive CME Church. “We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable. No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year.”

Sitting in a booth at Sugar Grits, a cafe a short walk from the church where Nichols’ parents would speak to the community on Friday, Pastor Earle Fisher, a leader in the Memphis social justice sphere, spoke to Insider as the city braced for chaos. The response to Nichols’ death was “the baseline of justice,” he said. 

“Historically the intensity of protests matches the level of dismissal or denial or delay in terms of justice,” Fisher told Insider — noting that he expected demonstrations to stay largely peaceful this time around. 

And they did.

In the end, the preparations for unrest were largely unnecessary. 

Apart from the marches over the weekend, which were nonviolent and organized, downtown streets stayed quiet. Friday’s demonstration in Memphis — which was largely centered around the “Old Bridge” blocking traffic into the city from Arkansas — was powerful, demanding, and nonviolent.

Protests in other cities also remained overwhelmingly peaceful. In New York and Los Angeles — where police stood guard in riot gear — there were some clashes.

In New York, an NYPD cruiser windshield was smashed. The NYPD told Insider that police arrested three people at a protest near Union Square. 

In Los Angeles, protesters tore down a police barricade. A man reportedly tossed a lit firework at a police car.

But the scenes were nothing like those after the murder of George Floyd in police custody, which set off protests that at times escalated into looting and arson. 

The Memphis Police Department said Sunday its cops hadn’t arrested a single demonstrator. 

It’s unclear if police strategy for addressing the protests played a role in the lack of clashes. At the protest in Memphis Friday night, a reporter could not spot a single uniformed officer in the area of the rally.

The next afternoon, as a crowd moved toward the Walter Bailey Jr. Criminal Justice Center, a protester approached a single police cruiser parked with its lights on and held a middle finger up at the officer inside.

The officer quickly retreated, driving away from the area, and the group moved on.

The Memphis Police Department would not comment on its protest strategy. 

A man holds up a sign during a demonstration in Memphis on Jan. 29, 2023 following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre Nichols

Shameka Wilson for Insider

Pleading for peace

On Friday morning, Nichols’ step-father Rodney Wells stood beside his wife and the nation’s most prominent living civil rights leaders at the pulpit of Mt. Olive CME Church. 

Wells told the community that in the days after his son was killed he wanted nothing less than first-degree murder charges for every officer on the scene. After speaking to prosecutors, though, the family said it accepted second-degree murder as appropriate, and Wells said he was “satisfied.” 

He told the crowd at the church — a few dozen activists nestled between reporters from Memphis and around the globe — that he understood the need for protest, but was shocked to learn that people were getting alerts to their phones urging them to avoid the crowds and stay home for their own safety.

He pleaded — just as Nichols’ mom RowVaughn Wells had done at a city skate park the night before — for peace in the city.

“We shouldn’t have that. We need to do this peacefully,” Rodney Wells said in church. “We want peaceful protest.”

At the “Call to Action” at Martyrs Park on Friday, activist leaders told the crowd they had been in touch with the Nichols family and were acting with their support. 

—Haven Orecchio (@InsiderHaven) January 28, 2023

 

 

People protest in Memphis following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre Nichols

Shameka Wilson for Insider

Protesters’ demands

For more than two hours Friday night, a group remained on the bridge. Organizers announced they had called Mayor Jim Strickland with a list of demands and would not leave until he called back. 

The demands included the passing a Data Transparency Ordinance at the city and county levels, tracking law enforcement data, ending the use of unmarked cars and plainclothes officers, and dissolving the SCORPION unit and other task forces.

The group was blocks away from the downtown business district that had been bracing for chaos, but the disruption was largely limited to truck drivers being unable to enter the city for several hours.

Some told Insider they understood why people were outraged.

Speaking from the driver’s seat of an 18-wheeler trying to merge onto the the highway, a truck driver named Mark told insider he was running out of fuel.

As a Black man, he said he didn’t fault the protesters and would “possibly” be out with them if he was from here. He then went on his way back to Oklahoma, with 1,400 miles left to go.

“It could have been me,” he told Insider, asking only to be identified by his first name in fear of his job. “It’s not the first and it won’t be the last.”

Demonstrators protest in Memphis on Jan. 28, 2023 following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between Tyre Nichols and police.

Shameka Wilson for Insider

The body-cam footage

When the videos were released on Friday, the public was met with what they were promised: utter brutality. 

Nichols’ mother said Friday she couldn’t bring herself to watch the video of her son’s beating. She urged those with children not to let them watch it. 

Many protesters, too, were not focused on the graphic videos. 

“We don’t need a video to know it was murder,” Amber Sherman yelled into a bullhorn during the first rally on Friday. 

Moments later, when the video was released by the city at 6 p.m., the group began its march toward Interstate 55 instead of stopping to view the footage being simultaneously released by police.

Dozens of protesters blocked a long line of 18-wheelers on the “Old Bridge,” which has long been a gathering place for protests in the city. They chanted “You take our lives, we’ll take your money” and “no justice, no peace” while holding signs in Nichols’ honor. They shared tales of police violence in the city. 

Holding a sign that read “Tyre Nichols” Sherri, a Memphis native, told Insider her 28-year-old Black son moved to Germany, and she’s glad he made it out of the city.

Meanwhile, much of America was seeing footage of Nichols’ beating for the first time.

People protest in Memphis following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between police and Tyre Nichols

Shameka Wilson for Insider

A proud city

By 9:30 p.m. on Friday, protesters had made their way back to the park. Boxes of pizza were passed out to the crowd.

Some later made their way to famous Blues district Beale Street, where they ate out. Live music could be heard from the streets as the International Blues Challenge carried on nearby without a hitch. 

—Haven Orecchio (@InsiderHaven) January 28, 2023

 

By Saturday morning, coffee shops and businesses downtown buzzed with conversations about the city’s response Nichols’ death. 

Rocky Goodwin, a downtown resident since 1988, told Insider he woke up Saturday full of pride for how the protesters stood up to demand change — with “poise.”

On Friday night, he and his husband had hunkered down at their apartment building. 

As the crowd made its way by their building, they waved from their window while watching news of clashes in other cities.

Demonstrators protest in Memphis on Jan. 28, 2023 following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between Tyre Nichols and police.

Shameka Wilson for Insider

Goodwin said he is proud that in the very city where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, peace prevailed.

“Our city leaders, the police chief, the religious leaders got ahead of it very quickly. The were arrested and charged and that made for a better night last night,” he said, his eyes welling up. 

“I’m very proud of my city. I could cry,” he added. “It was just incredible. We were just so proud. Memphis strong.” 

—Haven Orecchio (@InsiderHaven) January 28, 2023

 

By 3 p.m.  Saturday, though, another protest was gaining steam. After seeing the video and not hearing back from the mayor or police chief about addressing their list of demands, demonstrators were more distraught.

Activist Amber Sherman kicked off the rally with harsh words for the city officials who didn’t return their calls the night before.

She didn’t watch the video, but was angry to learn there were people on scene who have not been charged. 

JB Smiley, a city councilman, also called for any EMTs and sheriff deputies who were on scene the night of the killing to be disciplined.

“We demand that each and every officer, every sheriff’s officer, every EMT (in the video) be immediately fired,” he said outside the fire station. 

Demonstrators protest in Memphis on Jan. 28, 2023 following the release of video showing the deadly encounter between Tyre Nichols and police.

Shameka Wilson for Insider

Moments later, news broke that the city had disbanded the SCORPION unit, an organized crime task force that the five charged officers served on, after listening to concerns from the Nichols’ family.

—Haven Orecchio (@InsiderHaven) January 28, 2023

 

The group cheered first, acknowledging the win.

“The unit that murdered Tyre has been permanently disbanded” someone called into a bullhorn “I’m sure his mother is proud of that.”

Still, protesters said the work is not done, and demanding the shutdown of every task force under the police department’s Organized Crime Unit.

“The SCORPION unit, that’s cool. That means we’re doing something right,” another organizer, Casio Montez, said. “We want the whole OCU.”

The NYT should tell readers whether it helped crooked FBI agents get Trump elected in 2016 inquirer.com/opinion/commen…