Memphis authorities released more than an hour of footage Friday of the violent beating of Tyre Nichols in which officers held the Black motorist down and struck him repeatedly as he screamed for his mother.
The video emerged one day after the officers, who are all Black, were charged with murder in Nichols' death.
The footage shows police savagely beating the 29-year-old FedEx worker for three minutes while screaming profanities at him throughout the attack.
Rochester Mayor Malik Evans and City Police Chief David Smith released a joint statement on Friday night reacting to the video footage from Memphis.
The statement says that, “We are all outraged by the depravity captured on this footage and pray that our city’s response to these images will be peaceful and productive.”
Evans and Smith said that the city administration and the police department are working to establish a higher level of trust between RPD officers and the community.
That statement comes after Rochester was in the national spotlight in 2020, with the death of Daniel Prude. Prude was naked and acting erratically while on foot on Jefferson Avenue in the early hours of March 23.
He was eventually met by Rochester police officers, who restrained Prude using a technique known as “segmenting.” He vomited and lost consciousness and was transported to Strong Memorial Hospital, where he died one week later. Public knowledge of what happened to Daniel Prude did not become public until September of that year.
News of Prude’s death came on the heels of a tumultuous summer of protests nationwide and in Rochester over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Word of Prude's death, which bore similarities to the Floyd case, immediately touched off protests again in Rochester and around the country.
The NYS Attorney General’s office did an investigation, but no charges were filed against the officers.
Free the People Roc, the activist organization which was a big part of protests and calls for change in the city released a statement Friday night saying that they find themselves “enraged and traumatized by the endless news of lives lost to police brutality.”
The group said that even though “routine traffic stops become deadly for Black people,” calls for systemic change across the country, “continue to be met with surface level reforms that do very little to protect Black and brown people.” Free the People Roc said that diversity hires and community policing models like those implemented in Memphis and in Rochester “do not stop police from brutalizing community members.”
Last October, it was announced that the city agreed to pay $12 million to the estate of Daniel Prude, to settle a lawsuit by the family.
Half of the amount was earmarked for "pain and suffering" and half for "wrongful death," according to a copy of the settlement filed in federal court.
In settling, the city admitted no liability and did not pay punitive damages.
A statement released Friday night by New York State Police Supt. Steven Nigrelli said that after reviewing the video of the incident involving Tyre Nichols, the NYSP strongly condemns the attack and said that, “We are outraged and sickened, and we also understand the frustration being felt by the public.”
This story includes reporting by WXXI/CITY Magazine reporter Gino Fanelli and the Associated Press.
