Understanding the federal inquiry on the Memphis Police Department

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice uncovered various civil rights violations by the Memphis Police Department. These violations included instances of excessive force, illegal traffic stops, and a disproportionate targeting of Black individuals in the predominantly Black city.

The 17-month investigation was launched after officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols after he ran away from a traffic stop in January 2023.

City officials have expressed hesitance in committing to a formal agreement with the Department of Justice to implement lasting changes within the police department. Their concerns revolve around factors such as the associated costs and the need for additional time to thoroughly evaluate the investigation’s findings.

What did investigators find?

The examination outlined a policing approach characterized by frequent traffic stops in neighborhoods without a comprehensive assessment of their impact or consideration of potential racial disparities, as per the investigation.

Officers quickly escalate encounters, including during such stops, and use excessive force when people are handcuffed or otherwise restrained. That includes letting police dogs bite people, including children, who were nonresistant and trying to surrender.

Officers stop and detain many drivers for minor infractions without legal justification, and invasively search people and cars, investigators found. They also treat Black people worse than white people for similar infractions, including traffic violations, drug offenses and discretionary misdemeanors such as loitering, according to the findings.

Police also discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities, investigators found. The city requires officers to respond to 911 calls involving people experiencing behavioral health issues, most of them nonviolent, but officers sometimes belittle and use unnecessary force on them, including shooting them with Tasers.

The report expressed serious concerns about officers’ treatment of children, saying they have subjected them to demeaning language and unnecessary force. They also might be eliciting involuntary and false confessions from children by using lies, false promises and threats during interrogations, investigators wrote.

Many of the police issues stem partly from poor training and policies that don’t clearly tell officers what they can or can’t do, according to investigators, who also cited a reluctance by the department to discipline problematic officer behavior.

By the numbers

— In a city of about 630,000 people, officers reported nearly 866,200 traffic stops between January 2018 and August 2023. Drivers faced citations or arrests in more than 296,600 cases, predominantly for minor infractions, according to the report. Memphis officers made about twice as many traffic stops and issued three times as many citations as police in the state’s biggest city, Nashville.

— In more than 90% of police encounters in which investigators determined an officer used a neck restraint on someone, the use of a neck restraint wasn’t noted in the police report.

— Black people were cited for loitering or curfew violations 13 times more often than white people were. For disorderly conduct, it was 3.6 times more. In driving infractions, Black drivers were cited 4.5 times more for equipment violations, 6.1 times more for defective lights and 9.8 times more for tinted windows.

— Between January 2020 and September 2023, officers used a Taser or pepper spray in more than 450 of the nearly 2,700 reported “less-lethal force” incidents.

— From January 2018 through August 2023, officers arrested 180 Black children for loitering or curfew violations, compared with four white children. They arrested 120 Black children for disorderly conduct and one white child.

The report describes numerous incidents

— Officers pepper-sprayed, kicked and fired a Taser at an unarmed man with a mental illness who tried to take a $2 soda from a gas station.

— When a man littered in a public park, three officers held him down and applied pressure to the back of his neck for 20 seconds, even though the man later told a lieutenant he offered to pick up the can he dropped.

— Outside a gas station, a man shouted, “Solve a crime” at two officers. One of them slammed the man on the hood of their squad car.

— After officers were alerted to a stolen car, one of them fired at a car at least eight times at a fast-food dive-thru in the middle of the day. Another of the officers had left his car and run toward the suspect’s car, but fell as the car moved slowly toward him, so his partner fired at the vehicle, still shooting as it slowed to a stop against a wall.

— An 8-year-old Black boy who had a history of mental health issues had at least nine encounters with officers between December 2021 and August 2023. Officers taunted and handcuffed him, threatened to use a Taser on him, threw him on a couch, put him in a squad car and took him to a psychiatric hospital.

— After a 16-year-old Black girl reported that she had been assaulted, officers handcuffed her when she wouldn’t give them her phone, then three hours later pushed her to the ground and handcuffed her again when she complained that the cuffs were hurting her wrists.