Tyre Nichols Beating Opens a Complex Conversation on Race and Policing

Black leadership is no guarantee that law enforcement will have credibility with the communities they serve. The former police chief of Minneapolis, Medaria Arradondo, who is Black, had criticized his own department over racism and vowed to change it, yet he presided over the department during the murder of George Floyd at the hands of his officers. He fired the officers but could not quell the outbreak of mass protests and the department’s deep rift with the community.

White officers historically “don’t get prosecuted as much” as Black officers, said Sarnie A. Randle Jr., a lawyer in Houston who has handled police abuse cases for decades. “Those are just the facts. Until we see all officers treated equally, I fear we’re going to be here for generations to come.”

Ms. Sherman, the activist working with the Nichols family, supports the prosecution of the officers. But, she says, it is also another way that she sees racism at work.

“At the end of the day, the city and the Police Department reminded them that they are Black men,” Ms. Sherman said, “and they will treat them less than, just like they treated Tyre, and make sure they fire them immediately and prosecute them.”

In downtown Memphis on Friday, Darell Johnson, a contractor, was using a drill to attach plywood to the windows of a loan agency building in case protests took a destructive turn, but by late Friday night they had ended peacefully. Mr. Johnson, 44, who is Black and has lived in Memphis for two decades, said that he was more focused on the tragedy of Mr. Nichols’s death than the fact that the five charged officers were Black.

“The color doesn’t matter,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s just that you had officers taking a guy’s life.”

Robert Chiarito, Douglas Morino, Mitch Smith, Vik Jolly, Jessica Jaglois, Rick Rojas, Remy Tumin, Michael D. Regan, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Wesley Parnell contributed reporting.