The Memphis police beating death of Tyre Nichols has drawn attention to the so-called "Scorpion" Unit involved. It has since been disbanded, but Marc Perrusquia, with the Institute for Public Service Reporting has been taking a deeper look into its recent history.
Q: After seeing these videos, I, for one, came away with the question: "how did these police officers have any legal grounds to yank somebody out of their car at a traffic stop?"
Perrusquia: Well, that's the 64,000 question. All this talk about MPD and the City being transparent... and they're getting all this credit nationwide: We still haven't seen everything. They haven't released everything. When that first video starts, it's Tyre Nichols' car stopped in the intersection at a red light. And you see Demetrius Haley come up and he's yelling at him, cursing at him, and then physically pulls him out of the car. So what precipitated that? We don't know.
Q: This unit was a response to the huge spike in crime — the record murder rate, the carjackings, the drag racing. Who was checking to make sure that what they were doing was constitutionally appropriate?
A: (Police Chief) C.J. Davis has said that, as part of her post-action criticism, that they have what she calls "supervisory gaps." That they have a huge problem with supervision. She gave some quote, something to the effect that they're woefully inadequate. And that she said she's asked the City for 150 new sergeant positions to act as field supervisors. That, to me, sounds like a crisis.
Q: You reported on Monday that the sixth officer that was suspended seen in the initial traffic stop was also a member of the Scorpion unit. What do you think is the importance of that?
A: The significance is that we know who these guys are, what they were doing. They were on this special unit that is highly criticized. These kinds of units — different police departments have them around the country — they do a lot of very aggressive policing in unmarked cars. Although their mission is to suppress violent crime, it seems in a lot of instances that they're out there harassing people. They're out there, driving around, looking for people who are loitering or driving with expired tags or tinted windows. It's kind of like a dragnet and they're just dragging all these people into this who may or may not be violent criminals. It's kind of a hit-and-miss kind of thing, and with a lot of very volatile interactions—dangerous situations that they seem to be creating with citizens.
Q: You've talked to a number of people in and around law enforcement about this unit. What were some of the red flags for them?
A: The lack of supervision. Buddy Chapman, the former Police Director here, said he favors this type of policing — what some call zero-tolerance or proactive policing — because it can be very effective. And this was a data-driven initiative where they would figure out where the hot spots of crime were and they'd send these guys out as saturation patrols. The problem is: it's highly risky... You have to keep this under close supervision. There's got to be a field lieutenant or a sergeant out there close by and there's got to be tight recording, tight controlling. But these early indications were getting is that they weren't getting that kind of supervision and that they were kind of, you know, running amok... without any type of control over them.
