Memphis Awaits Video of a Deadly Police Beating

Last week, the Police Department said the five officers had been fired after a “thorough review of the circumstances surrounding this incident,” which found that they had violated department policies on excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid. The Memphis Police Association, the union representing officers, has declined to comment on the accusations.

The officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — all joined the department between 2017 and 2020. Other officers are also being investigated for policy violations, and Chief Davis said that she has ordered a review of specialized groups like the Scorpion Unit.

The Memphis Fire Department has said that two of its employees who responded to the scene have also been “relieved of duty” while it conducts its own internal investigation.

Some of the first descriptions of what was recorded at the scene were shared on Monday by Mr. Nichols’s family and their lawyers after they were shown the video in private.

“‘What did I do?’ — that was his question,” Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who is representing the family, said of Mr. Nichols in the news conference. “‘What did I do?’”

Antonio Romanucci, another lawyer for Mr. Nichols’s family, said that Mr. Nichols was beaten by officers for three minutes. The video, he said, showed Mr. Nichols being pepper sprayed, shocked with a stun gun and restrained.

Mr. Nichols told the officers that he just wanted to go home, the lawyers said.

Mr. Nichols’s family is pushing for the officers to be charged with first-degree murder. “Anything short of that we will not accept,” Rodney Wells, Mr. Nichols’s stepfather, said at a news conference on Monday after watching the footage, which he described as “horrific.”