Opinion

Memphis Braces For Race Riots After Irresponsible Message From Police Chief

DailyWire.com

Do you know what we haven’t had in a while? Race riots.

Don’t worry, though, because George Floyd, 2.0 is potentially coming to Memphis, Tennessee.

At least, that’s what it seems like after listening to Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis break down the death of Tyre Nichols. 

Nichols was involved in a traffic stop on January 7. He died three days later on January 10. As a result, five Memphis police officers have been fired and charged with second-degree murder.

Video footage of the incident hasn’t been released yet, but authorities are letting people know it’s a real doozy. It will reportedly be published Friday night.

“I expect you to feel outraged in the disregard of basic human rights as our police officers have taken an oath to do the opposite of what transpired on the video,” she explained in the video below. “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest, to demand action and results. But we need to ensure our community is safe in this process. None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction in our community or against our citizens.”

So that’s the setup. She’s saying she expects you to feel “outraged” — which could be taken as a message that it’s okay for you to do whatever you want in protest. She did add a minor note at the end about safety and how violence won’t be tolerated, but that part was really glossed over. 

Worse, she is essentially saying this video is worse than you could ever imagine, conjuring all sorts of images for listeners. 

Of course, the Memphis police chief could have attempted to assuage concerns by giving you facts about the case. 

She didn’t, so I will.

Per Fox News, “Nichols was pulled over on Jan. 7 around 8:30 p.m. for ‘reckless driving’ near Raines Road and Ross Road in Memphis. A ‘confrontation occurred’ during the stop, which resulted in police chasing Nichols on foot, police said. He was later apprehended.”

“While attempting to take the suspect into custody, another confrontation occurred; however, the suspect was ultimately apprehended,” Memphis Police Department said. “Afterward the suspect complained of having shortness of breath, at which point an ambulance was called to the scene.”

Then, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he passed away three days later.

Now, based on that alone, a reasonable response would be, ‘I don’t know what that footage is going to show, but I think that we can already discern that had he complied with the police officers, and did not start running, thus causing a foot chase, and causing two separate confrontations with police then — perhaps he would be alive.’

Instead, though, citizens of Memphis and America are left feeling they should be infuriated before even seeing the video.

It should be noted that nowhere in that video did Davis show support for the police. She didn’t mention how things allegedly escalated because of Nichols’ own actions, according to the report. 

So, in effect, she has now created a potentially very dangerous situation in Memphis. As with George Floyd, it’s highly possible violence will break out across the country like we saw in 2020 thanks to the BLM rioters.

Worse — we haven’t even seen the video yet.

What Davis did was irresponsible. It seems she didn’t want people to have the facts, she wanted people to have heightened emotions.

Ready your engines, people, because it could get very ugly in Memphis starting Friday night.

This article has been edited for clarity.

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