The agonizing footage of Memphis police officers kicking and punching Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old man, during a Jan. 7, 2023, traffic stop horrified the city and the nation.
Fallout was swift: Five officers were fired and charged in connection with Mr. Nichols’s beating and death. The Police Department disbanded the street crime unit the officers belonged to. And the City Council approved a series of new policing ordinances, including one to reduce traffic stops for minor infractions.
But as three of the former officers are set to stand trial for civil rights and obstruction charges in federal court on Monday, there is a sense for some in Memphis that progress has stalled. The city is again embroiled in a standoff with state Republican leaders over its policing and public safety policies, a brewing dispute that lawmakers have threatened to escalate by stripping the city of a share of state sales tax revenues.
And the violence at the center of the charges is also likely to reignite a debate over police tactics and the often brutal treatment of Black men by law enforcement, at a moment when cities and states have left many of their police accountability goals unresolved.
“We’ve been able to grieve a little and heal a little — however, now that this trial is coming up, we’re going to have to relive all of that again,” said RowVaughn Wells, Mr. Nichols’s mother, in an interview. She still has not watched the videos showing what happened to her son.
Mr. Nichols’s stepfather, Rodney Wells, added, “We’ll never fully heal, but justice for Tyre is a step in the right direction.”
Nationwide, cases brought against police officers have resulted in a mixed array of convictions, acquittals and at least one mistrial. Of the five former officers originally charged in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death, two have since pleaded guilty to federal charges of depriving Mr. Nichols of his civil rights and lying about what had happened.
Many of the facts of the case are still shrouded: The pretrial legal arguments — including over what witness testimony and evidence can be heard — have largely been sealed from public view, in part, Judge Mark Norris has said, to ensure an impartial jury.
Representatives for the Police Department and the office of the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee declined to comment. Lawyers for the three former officers set to stand trial, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, did not respond to a request for comment. Trials on state charges, including second-degree murder, are still pending, as is a multimillion lawsuit against the city.
“The fact that you do have both state and federal charges being brought — you wouldn’t have seen this five years ago,” said Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has represented both Mr. Nichols’s family and a number of families affected by police violence. “So there’s incremental progress, but we can’t get complacent.”
Mr. Nichols’s family and Memphis residents are bracing for a painful recitation of the brutal beating he endured and still-unknown details about why he was stopped that night.
“It is not impossible for us to have police officers who are focused on protection and on safety, and not have the death of people at the hands of police,” said State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who represents Memphis and Shelby County in the Tennessee legislature.
In the 20 months since Mr. Nichols’s death, the state’s Republican leaders have repeatedly maligned Steve Mulroy, the newly elected district attorney for Shelby County, and other Memphis-area officials for failing to address the scope of the city’s crime issues and overstepping their legal boundaries.
At least one police reform ordinance supported by Mr. Nichols’s family, which would have prevented police from stopping cars over more minor traffic infractions, was repealed by Republicans in the legislature.
Mr. Mulroy now faces a threat to oust him from his position when the legislature convenes in January, led by State Senator Brent Taylor. And last month, the top two Republicans in the legislature threatened to withhold sales tax revenue from the city, the second-largest in the state, over plans to put three gun safety initiatives on the November ballot.
The referendums include proposed changes to the city charter to require the safe storage of firearms and handgun permits, ban assault rifles and allow law enforcement to temporarily confiscate firearms from people a court deems to be a threat to themselves or others. (The Tennessee legislature has rejected similar proposals, including from Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.)
“With the recent actions of the progressive, soft-on-crime D.A. in Shelby County and the Memphis City Council’s continued efforts to override state law with local measures, we feel it has become necessary to take action and protect all Tennesseans’ rights and liberties,” said Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton in a statement. He and state election officials have argued that state law pre-empts the proposed Memphis ordinances.
Mr. Pearson said that state’s leaders were making it impossible for the city to change. “If you have the state legislature and the executive branch gung-ho about refusing to do anything to help you reduce crime, refusing to do anything to help you with this epidemic that is plaguing you, it is really hard to make progress for a city,” he said.
Memphis has long struggled with high amounts of crime, as well as the systemic oppression of its Black residents, nearly a quarter of whom live in poverty. There were at least 1,038 fatal shootings in Memphis between 2020 and 2023, according to a New York Times analysis, compared with at least 400 in Nashville, the only Tennessee city with more residents. Just over half of Memphis’s 633,000 residents lived near a shooting.
Violent crime rates have since gone down in the city, after harrowing spikes in 2022 and 2023, a trend seen elsewhere in the country. In July, the Police Department said in a presentation to the City Council that homicide, assault and robbery rates had all dropped in the first six months of the year, compared with the same time frame in 2023.
The department’s leader, Chief Cerelyn Davis, who disbanded the street crime unit, has served in an interim capacity since 2021, after a majority of the City Council did not support her renomination.
“I think there may have been some small, incremental changes, but there is a lot more to do,” said Kermit Moore, the president of the Memphis branch of the N.A.A.C.P.
He added, “The citizens of Memphis are ready to get these trials behind us, so our city can heal.”
The Republican supermajority has a history of flexing its might over its biggest, Democratic-governed cities: The Council that oversees Nashville and its surrounding county has repeatedly tangled with the legislature in court.
But Memphis’s leaders say the perceived overreach by the largely white state Republican leadership particularly rankles in their city, where more than a third of the state’s Black residents live and an increasing majority of leaders are Black.
“We’re taking some hits; we’ve experienced some dark days,” said J.B. Smiley Jr., a member of the Memphis City Council who announced a lawsuit to force the three gun safety initiatives on the ballot. “Things will get better because we’re going to actively think about how to approach this situation and actively put legislation forward and actively be vocal about things that have negative and harmful impact on our community.”
A hearing over the lawsuit is scheduled for Sept. 16, as the trial for the former Memphis police officers will be underway.
“We just have to pause a little bit because of the trial and everything, and make sure we get justice for Ty,” Ms. Wells said. “But once this is all over, we’ll be back in Washington, Nashville, wherever we need to be in order to get some kind of reform.”
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