United States: At funeral of Tyre Nichols, Kamala Harris denounces “a violent act” of police

After having taken a long time in her arms the mother of the 29-year-old African American in the Church of Memphis, the American vice-president had hard words towards the agents who rolled her while He shouted that he had done nothing and called for help.

MO12345LEMONDE with AFP

“Someone’s good” to whom “a violent act” of the police took life too early. At the funeral of Tyre Nichols, a young African-American whose deadly tobacco pass by black police shocked the United States, the speakers, including vice-president Kamala Harris, insurgent against police violence.

After having taken Tyre Nichols in her arms for a long time in the church of Memphis where this tribute was organized, M Me Harris had hard words towards the agents who rolled him Besides when he shouted that he had done nothing and called for help.

“Didn’t he have the right to be safe?” Launched the vice-president. “Here is a family who lost his son and his brother after an act of violence” perpetrated by “people responsible for protecting them”, and “this violent act did not aim to ensure public security”, she said in front of the crowd.

“We will end up defeating”

Tyre Nichols was “someone good, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being left too early,” said the Reverend J. Lawrence at the opening of the office Turner at the Mississippi boulevard Christian Church. “Today, when we celebrate Tyre’s life and console his family, we inform this nation that the replay of this episode, which makes black lives a hashtag, has been canceled and will not be renewed for a new season “He said. “We will end up defeating.”

The Reverend Al Sharpton, a figure in the fight for civil rights, pronounced the funeral prayer. Strong symbol, a brother of George Floyd, a black forty -year -old whose death in 2020 under the knee of a white policeman had triggered massive anti -racist demonstrations, was present, as was the mother of Breonna Taylor. This 26-year-old African-American had been killed in the middle of the night by the police in his Kentucky apartment in 2020 and became an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement (“Black Lives count”).

On January 7, Tyre Nichols, 29, was arrested by police officers from a special Memphis unit, who reproached him for an offense in the Highway Code. Routed with blows, he died three days later in the hospital.

Three firefighters and two new police officers are targeted by disciplinary surveys for this homicide, for which five black agents have already been dismissed and charged with murder, the police and firefighters of Memphis announced on January 30. Preston Hemphill, a white police officer in service in this big city in the south of the United States since 2018, “was suspended from the start of the investigations (…), at the same time as the other agents,” said the spokesperson for Local police, Kim Elder, in a press release.

horror and misunderstanding

The city firefighters also announced that they had dismissed two paramedics and a lieutenant. “Our investigation concluded that the paramedics reacted on the basis of the initial nature of the appeal (a person who received gas to pepper) and information that they received on the spot, and that they did not Directed examined “of Tyre Nichols, explained the head of the Memphis firefighters, Gina Sweat. The three dismissed individuals are accused of having violated “many rules and protocols” of the Services of Firefighters of Memphis, she added.

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Images of the drama, captured by the on -board cameras of agents and surveillance cameras, were made public on Friday. We see the police brutally take out the young man from his vehicle. Placed on the ground, it is sprayed with tear gas and targeted by an electrical pulse pistol. He then fled on foot to his mother’s home. Caught up, he is kicked, fist and baton.

The Calvary of Tyre Nichols aroused horror and misunderstanding in the United States. Several demonstrations in his honor took place this weekend in the country, without taking on the scale of the exceptional mobilization which followed the death of George Floyd, muffled by a white policeman in 2020.

/Media reports cited above.