On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a black driver, was beaten up by Los Angeles police officers and it was only thanks to the presence of mind of a bystander who filmed the scene that the officers ended up in court.
• Also read: America shocked by video of Tire Nichols’ fatal arrest
• Also read: Five police officers charged with murder after brutally arresting an African American man
• Also read: Tire Nichols’ mother has accused police of hitting her son ‘like a piñata’
He survives, but a year later the acquittal of the accused sets the California city ablaze and riots leave dozens dead and $1 billion in property damage.
On Friday, America was again met with the shock of the release of a video of police violence. It shows the beatings of five black police officers on the young African American Tire Nichols in Memphis in early January.
He died three days later.
This time, unlike Rodney King, the agents were quickly fired and charged before pictures of the drama were revealed.
AFP
The arrest of Rodney King in 1991.
In both cases, it was thanks to the presence of visual evidence that the violence was mediated, says Jack Glaser, a researcher at UC Berkeley and a specialist in racial bias in law enforcement.
“Before Rodney King, not many people had cameras, and it was the fact that someone had one and could film it that brought him national fame,” he tells AFP.
That visibility has exploded with the generalization of smartphones and pedestrian cameras being forced on police, he points out.
Swift penalties
Without these images, it is difficult to hold the agents affected by this violence accountable. “Without that, there is often a lot of obstruction and mobilization by police unions to protect jobs,” continues Jack Glaser.
Additionally, it was the existence of this evidence that prompted Memphis authorities to take relatively quick action against the offending cops, estimates Patrick Oliver, a former Cleveland, Ohio, north commissioner who now directs the criminal justice program at Cedarville University.
Such a speed is “extremely rare,” he told the AFP news agency.
To him, this indicates that “the Memphis Police Department believes they have sufficient evidence to justify their administrative sanctions.”
The decision to publish the images so quickly is strategic, says Patrick Oliver.
“People who are rightfully outraged will know that the police took action against these five officers and prosecutors have already started criminal proceedings.”
“emerged part”
For Rodney King’s daughter Lora Dene King, Tire Nichols’ death is part of a long line of police violence, from his father in 1991 to George Floyd, who was killed by a white police officer in 2020.
“It’s going to be just another hashtag and we’re going to get on with our lives before it happens again,” she raged on NBC television.
For Jack Glaser, society recognizes that black men are disproportionately affected by police violence, and the police hierarchy recognizes that their officers’ actions are under scrutiny.
Headline-making dramas like the death of Tire Nichols are only “the tip of the iceberg”, visible only because of the level of violence and their documentation in pictures, he believes.
“But there are many, many more instances of excessive, if not fatal, use of force.”