Calls for police reform at Tyre Nichols’ funeral – National & International News – WED 1Feb2023

Calls for police reform at Tyre Nichols’ funeral.

Texas: 6 dead, nearly 350,000 without power in winter storm.

Myanmar: Western fossil fuel companies profit under brutal junta.

NATIONAL NEWS

Memphis: calls for police reform at Tyre Nichols’ funeral

In Memphis, the severe weather forced a delay of a service in memory of Tyre Nichols who was beaten to death by Memphis police officers earlier this month. The service was to take place at 10:30am but instead commenced around 1pm local time. Despite the weather, the service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church was well attended. Rev. Al Sharpton gave the eulogy, during which he condemned the actions of the police. “But you don’t fight crime by becoming criminals yourself. You don’t stand up to thugs in the street becoming thugs yourself. You don’t fight gangs by becoming five armed men against an unarmed man. That ain’t the police. That’s punks,” Sharpton said.

Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke at the service. Like Sharpton and many others at the service, including Nichols’ parents RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, Harris urged Congress to pass the long-stalled George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

The act would standardize many police practices as well as create a national database of police brutality incidents. The goal is to combat the use of excessive force and to make it easier to hold officers and their departments accountable when they do. During her remarks, Nichols’ mother RowVaughn Wells said that if Congress did not pass the act, the blood of the next person to die due to police brutality would be on their hands.

Accountability at the top?

Sharpton remarked at one point that he believed the officers would have acted as they did if they believed they would be held accountable. Indeed, since the 5 MPD officers were fired, other citizens have come forward to say they had endured brutal and excessively aggressive treatment at the hands of some of the officers, or others in the SCORPION unit, before Tyre Nichols’ fatal encounter. Some even showed that they had complained to the police Internal Affairs division, but their complaints were not addressed.

It’s now emerged that 4 of the 5 officers indicted in Nichols’ death had committed infractions (including one involving excessive force) before they joined the SCORPION unit, which was founded in October 2021.

Despite this, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis initially reluctant to disband the unit. She was resistant to shutting down the entire unit just because “a few officers” committed “some egregious act” and insisted she needed the unit to continue to work. It was only after continued revelations about the unit and continued public outcry following the release of the video that Davis announced she was disbanding SCORPION.

Years before she became Memphis Chief of Police, Davis was Commander of the infamous Red Dog unit in the Atlanta PD, which was similar to the SCORPION unit. That unit was disbanded in 2011 due to rampant accusations of excessive force, police brutality, illegal searches, and civil rights violations. Before that, Davis was fired from the APD in 2008 for attempting to prevent an investigation into a sex crime allegedly committed by her co-worker’s husband.

The SCORPION unit was founded just four months after Davis became Chief of Police in Memphis.

Texas: 6 dead, nearly 350,000 without power in winter storm

The harsh winter storms moving across the southeastern US has forced the cancelations of thousands of flights and left roads icy and dangerous. Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi are all expecting multiple rounds of precipitation over the next 24 hours.

In Texas, six people have died due to icy road conditions since Monday. At the time of this writing, nearly 350,000 customers are without power throughout the state, 180,000 of them in Travis County, where the state capital Austin is located.

Ahead of the storm, many feared a repeat of the deadly February 2021 storms which left thousands in Texas without power for days. Following the storm, the official death toll from the storm was placed at 246 people. Those deaths spanned 77 of Texas’ 246 counties. The causes of death included injuries, hypothermia, and carbon monoxide poisoning from unsafe heat sources. A separate analysis by BuzzFeed claimed that the total was closer to 700 deaths.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the organization that oversees the Texas power grid, was widely blamed for the failures that led to those deaths. Officials say they have since made improvements that should make the grid more resilient to freezing weather. This round of storms will be the first major test of their work since February 2021.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Myanmar: Fossil fuel companies profit under brutal junta

Two years ago today, Myanmar’s military leadership (known as the Tatmadaw) seized power in the country and arrested much of its civilian leadership. Myanmar’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been imprisoned ever since and has been brought before the military-controlled court to be summarily tried and sentenced on a litany of sham charges. Meanwhile, both in Myanmar’s cities and its countryside, resistance fighters are engaging in all out civil war with the Tatmadaw forces. In response, the Tatmadaw has committed numerous atrocities, including laying waste to rural villages and torturing and killing civilians.

The US and many other Western countries have imposed various sanctions on Myanmar’s military leadership. Despite this, a report from a watchdog group shows that some of the world’s largest oil and gas service companies (some of them subsidiaries of US companies) have continued to operate the country. Their activities have profited them handsomely and also served to prop up the military dictatorship despite sanctions.

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