Yet one more time, police caught on videotape, beating mercilessly on a Black man until he died, have been found not guilty of murder and, in fact, of all state charges. We speak of the case of Tyre Nichols, dead at age 29—and of three of the Memphis, Tennessee, cops (also Black) who have walked free, jubilant, out of the courtroom. 

We will tell the story. But first some questions to keep in mind as you read this:

Why do these horrors and outrages keep happening, no matter what people do? 

Could it be different? 

And what do we have to do to change it?

Who Was Tyre Nichols?

Tyre Nichols was a young Black man full of creativity and beauty—an aspiring photographer, a father and a skateboarder. His photography website starts with “Welcome to the world through my eyes.” 

Tyre was on his way home from his job at FedEx when he was pulled over by police for supposed “reckless driving.” Within moments of stopping him, the cops yanked Tyre out of his car, pushed him to the ground, pepper-sprayed him, and zapped him with a Taser. Clearly terrified, Tyre managed to escape from this lynch mob and tried to run home, just two minutes away. When the five pigs—all Black and members of the Memphis PD’s “elite” Scorpion Task Force—caught up with Tyre, they punched, kicked and hit him with a baton for three minutes. Tyre put up no resistance and repeatedly called out for his mother. 

Tyre went into cardiac arrest at the scene. He died at a hospital three days later from blunt force trauma to the head, with tears and bleeding in the brain.

The videos from the police body cams and a neighborhood surveillance camera were released three weeks after Tyre was murdered. Aside from the savage beating itself, the videos show the pigs standing around after they had pummeled Tyre, chatting instead of giving urgently needed medical care as he lay close to death. 

Where Did This Outrageous Verdict Come From?

The all-white jury for the state trial had been selected and brought in from predominantly white and more wealthy Chattanooga, Tennessee—358 miles and a world away from majority-Black Memphis, where Tyre was murdered. This jury watched the same videos of Tyre being mercilessly beaten to death, and concluded these pigs violated no laws of this system. A Memphis attorney said, “This jury was not reflective of the city of Memphis,” because in East Tennessee “jurors tend to be more conservative,” and “they're going to be more friendly to the police.” 

The defense attorneys vilified Tyre using “evidence” allegedly found after they murdered him—a small amount of marijuana and psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), and credit and debit cards not in his name. They argued that all of the wanton brutality that killed him was “because of choices Tyre made.” They claimed the cops had “probable cause” for stopping, cuffing, and searching Tyre—“and then everything falling apart from there when Mr. Nichols would not cooperate.” They also tried to pin the worst violence on one of the pigs not on trial (who intends to plead guilty to state charges). But most effective were the use-of-force “experts” who testified that the three pigs acted in compliance with police department policies and “widely accepted law enforcement standards.” And character witnesses testified that the men were good officers who did their job the right way. Never mind what you saw on minute after minute of video of these same pigs viciously brutalizing Tyre! 

Why Do So Many Keep Dying, Year After Year After Year?

Tyre's murder came two years after the promises of police reform were made by those in authority, following the beautiful uprising against the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that shook the whole country. And since Tyre's murder, police in this country have continued to kill over 1,000 people each year, disproportionately Black, Latino, and Native American.

Now the fascist Trump has signed an executive order that calls for “strengthening and unleashing America’s law enforcement.” This is a promise of backing from the highest levels of the government for the police to act even more aggressively and violently against the masses of people. The executive order calls on the Defense Department to step up its policy of turning over military weapons and other hardware to state and local police forces. 

Once More on the Three Questions

Why do these horrors keep happening? 

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said, in BAsics 1:24:

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Could it be different?

Yes—through a revolution to overthrow the white supremacist capitalist-imperialist system that has birthed all this madness and oppression since Day 1. Such a revolution would bring in a totally different legal system, as set forth in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian.

The role of government institutions established with this new socialist Constitution, including the police and military, will no longer be to contain, control, repress, brutalize, murder and slaughter people, here and all over the world. Instead, these radically new institutions will safeguard the rights of the people and give backing to the masses of people in moving to abolish all forms of discrimination and inequality, all relations of oppression and exploitation. They will defend the new, emancipating society against attempts to sabotage, attack and destroy it, and will support people throughout the world fighting for the goal of emancipation.

As set forth in this Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, the people in this new society will not only be allowed but encouraged and enabled to fully speak their minds politically, to express themselves freely through artistic and other means, to dissent and protest with constitutional and institutionalized protection of their right to do so. They will be provided with the means for doing this, because this is an important part of creating an atmosphere where people can “breathe” and feel at ease, and where they will be inspired to join with others in grappling with what will, and what will not, contribute to the emancipating transformation of society and the world as a whole.

(From WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM)

As one concrete manifestation of this, the security forces in this new system would sooner give their own life than to take the life of one of the masses.

Finally, what do we have to do to change it?

Make revolution. Nothing less. The strategy for this has been laid out. The leadership for this exists, in Bob Avakian, and the revcoms that he leads. And the situation—in which the rulers themselves are in sharp conflict with each other of the likes not seen since the Civil War—is the kind in which revolution is more possible.

What is missing is you. Get into these materials and, as you do, get with this revolution.