I watched and followed all the stories about the Memphis Police Murder this weekend. The five officers deserve the charges and removal from their positions. It certainly appears like they committed murder.
So, we’re all on the same page; now the questions:
At first glance my reaction was this was absolutely poor training. How could these officers act like this if they were adequately trained?
Followed by, where was their leadership? Someone with experience to stop the madness?
A few things seemed clear to me:
These officers failed.
The leadership of the Memphis Police failed.
The political leaders of Memphis failed.
A young man is dead, a family heartbroken, and now more pain is ahead for the families of the officers.
What else do we know?
Well, we hear the term Scorpion to describe their unit. Do you know what that stands for?
Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
It was formed in 2021 to crack down on violent crime in Memphis which had gotten so bad.
With the public outcry about crime, the action was taken to create a special unit to combat it in key areas.
The idea seems sound, but the leadership of Memphis failed.
They failed to train the officers correctly.
They lowered the police standards to hire recruits because no one wants the job anymore.
Then they staffed it with inexperienced officers (some only two years on the job).
They failed to monitor the team despite warnings.
Memphis leadership in elected offices and police leadership failed here.
Their failure has a citizen beaten to death in the street, at least five young men they hired to bring order facing life in jail, a unit designed to protect vulnerable citizens disbanded, and more mayhem ahead.
More than those five officers must be held accountable.
In addition, consider this.
All weekend all we heard about was this one death. There are over 400 homicides in the nation in an average week. Don’t those lives matter?
How come only a police death is important to the media? How about the police officers who are killed. There were over 60 of them last year. Don’t they count?
The media needs to tell the whole story and not just when police go astray. Everyone must be accountable for their actions.