ISSN: 2578-5001
Authors: Murty KS*
The recent death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man in Memphis, following the pattern of several others including George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 underscores the importance of change in policing communities in the United States. Africa Americans account for 13 percent of the nation’s population but constitute 24 percent of those fatally shot by police, with a likelihood of 2.5 times to that of White Americans. Dating back to the 1931 National Commission on Law and Enforcement’s Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement, there has been an ongoing concern about the pervasive violent policing in African- American communities; however, this concern has drastically increased in recent decades, especially in the post 9/11 era with the advent of modern technology that drastically increased public awareness through social media and television on one hand, and the routine use of military-grade equipment by police departments in urban communities on the other. Images of police officers in helmets and body armor riding through neighborhoods in tanks along with stories of protests following the killings of Black citizens became regular televised reports. This paper examines the recent escalation of police use of excessive force adopting such operations as SCORPIAN (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) as a part of police militarization and argues for the need to revert back to community policing—a method that once viewed to be less violent and more effective.
Keywords: Tyre Nichols; SCORPIAN; Community Policing; Memphis; Police Militarization; Excessive use of Force
