Police ‘blue-first’ mentality a factor in Tyre Nichols’ death

The grotesque and videotaped killing of 29 year old Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee has both a predictable quality to it, and a surprising one. The predictable comes from the Groundhog Day aspect of unarmed black men having what turned out to be deadly encounters with law enforcement officers. 

The surprise has to do with the skin color of the officers who beat Nichols to death after a traffic stop. The death sentence was, it seemed, carried out for the sin of refusing to comply with the profanity-laced commands in exactly the way that the officers wanted, and for fleeing the scene. It’s true that Nichols tried to get away and run to his mother’s house. He ran like you and I would run if we were attacked by a pack of wolves. In the Memphis killing, there were five wolves, and they were all black. Just like the victim. Surprise. 

Black Lives Matter. Hmm. Apparently the life of one black man didn’t matter at all to five black police officers who didn’t even call for an ambulance for nearly a half hour after the beating. Nichols, a young man who was someone’s father, someone’s son, died in a hospital bed three days later, from injuries sustained in the beating. It goes without saying, but let’s say it anyway. Nothing justifies bullies with badges and bullets preying on the weak and vulnerable to the point in some cases of actually taking people’s lives. 

Nonetheless, to be fair, it turns out that sometimes people make bad decisions to resist arrest, to fight back against officers, to flee. And some of those cases it appears that officers get amped up and take matters into their own hands. At that moment, however, they stop being lawmen and become outlaws. If people commit a crime, arrest them, and let prosecutors, juries, and judges do the rest. That’s how the system is supposed to work, isn’t it? 

Actually, I know for a fact that it is. My dad is a retired cop who was on the job for 37 years. I grew up around cops and lawyers and judges. I know how to tell good cops from bad ones. And I understand how bad cops can make life more difficult and more dangerous for the good ones. And no, it doesn’t all just boil down simply to skin color. Once upon a time, some of us – and I count myself in this group – may have believed in the fairy tale that black and brown cops would be on those occasions when they came in contact with their own kind, more empathetic, more humane, more restrained than many white cops have been over the generations. But I don’t know any Latinos and African-Americans who still believe that folly today.

Life teaches you otherwise. In fact, we know from experience that many black and brown cops are blue first. And this mentality too often leads those cops of color to be overly brutal with their own people, as if to somehow overcompensate and prove to their white partners and white bosses where their true allegiance lies. Brutality is often the order of the day, in fact, with Latino Border Patrol agents, who represent more than 50% of the ranks of the personnel in that agency. God help the poor migrant or refugee from Mexico or El Salvador or Venezuela named Sanchez or Gonzalez, who finds himself apprehended by a border patrol agent whose name tag reads Sanchez or Gonzalez. If that happens, amigos, que via con dios. Go with God.

Who knew back in the 1970s and 80s when activists were demanding that cities like Memphis, or Phoenix or Dallas recruit more black and brown police officers that we would decades later need so many couches, to allow those who were led into the club, the chance to unpack their personal demons. So these cops don’t become devils.