“When you catch that guy, make sure he goes to jail via The MED.”

That’s what one Memphis Police Department officer said is part of MPD folklore — might be fact, might be fiction. As the story goes, a lieutenant told his subordinates nearly a decade ago that was how to handle a particular car break-in suspect: Make sure he goes to jail via The MED. 

Memphians remember Tyre Nichols at one-year anniversary vigil

“Just listening to old heads talking, they used to literally whoop people’s a-- if they even talked wrong to them,” said the MPD officer. The Daily Memphian has agreed not to publish the officer’s name to protect their employment with the department. 

According to current and former MPD officers, there was a time when violence against suspects was talked about freely within the force. 

But relatively recent evidence suggests that kind of culture may have continued within MPD. Almost exactly a year ago, on Jan. 7, 2023, 29-year-old Memphian Tyre Nichols was beaten by five now-former MPD officers; he died at St. Francis Hospital three days later. 

One officer has already pleaded guilty to federal charges and plans to do the same with state criminal charges. The other four officers still await trial. In both the pending criminal cases and a civil lawsuit against the city and its police department, a central question will likely be: Was Nichols’ death the result of five rogue officers or was it due to a systemic culture of violence within MPD? 

That question may also be top of mind for Memphis City Council members as they consider MPD Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis’ reappointment Tuesday, Jan. 9, as the city’s top cop. 

One year later: Where do the Tyre Nichols cases stand now?

MPD did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but it is now facing a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into whether its officers routinely subjected citizens to unlawful stops, searches and arrests, if officers used excessive force and if MPD used racially discriminatory practices. 

Davis recently said “there’s been a lot of lessons learned, I think, for everybody.” 

“We’re here to serve our community and not be a burden on our community and not to terrorize our community, as well,” she said during a Jan. 4 press conference called by Memphis Mayor Paul Young. 

“The community needs good police officers on the street. And the ones that are doing work every day, that continue to do good work every day, we’ve got to continue to support them,” she added, “but also make sure that we’re holding them accountable to do the right thing.”

But only time will tell what lessons have been learned and if those lessons can be retained. 

‘No tolerance for the chaos:’ Young pledges unified front to fight crime

Been here before

Former MPD director Buddy Chapman remembers being a young officer and hearing his peers joke about using nightsticks to give people the “John Gaston turban.” The reference was to getting a head bandage from Memphis’ old John Gaston Hospital on Madison Avenue, which was demolished in 1990. 

It was that kind of culture, Chapman said, that led MPD to come under a federal consent decree — essentially a mandate to fix a problem — about its use of deadly force during the 1970s. 

As police director, Chapman was responsible for the department meeting the terms of that consent decree, as well as another about the department’s use of racial profiling. 

He said the 1970s consent decrees were “nerve-wracking” but he also called them a “mixed blessing.”

“It wasn’t something we wanted to go through. But it was a good thing in that it helped us do what we should have been doing in the first place. And to do it better.”

Some familiar names but also new blood will join Young administration

To meet the terms of those consent decrees, MPD instituted a Shoot Team that investigated all shootings, whether or not they were fatal. The department also filmed its own “Shoot, Don’t Shoot” training video for officers. 

“I want to tell you, that put us on the map,” Chapman said. “It really did.”

A new investigation 

During Young’s first press conference, Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy addressed the culture around law enforcement. 

He said officers are “doing a dangerous job under difficult conditions, and we need to support them. But at the same time, there are issues of culture and systemic problems that need to be addressed.”

In July of 2023, the U.S. DOJ announced a new pattern-or-practice investigation into MPD, months after it also announced a civil rights investigation into Nichols’ death. The five former officers involved were also federally indicted. 

Paul Young says MPD Chief Davis will stay

According to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Davis, those investigations coincided with a voluntary, internal review into MPD’s use-of-force and de-escalation tactics. MPD has not yet shared the results of its internal investigation.

Joanna Schwartz, professor of law at University of California Los Angeles, said federal pattern-or-practice investigations often end with a city entering into a consent decree, a court-enforced settlement that serves as a legally binding performance improvement plan.

The MPD officer who asked to remain anonymous said DOJ investigators have been conducting ride-alongs with officers but are keeping their observations confidential. 

The officer also said they have not heard concerns from commanders or department leaders about the outcome of the DOJ’s pattern-or-practice investigation. MPD is currently dealing with another active consent decree, from 2018, when a court determined the department violated its former 1978 Kendrick Consent Decree when it created a list of activists who were not allowed to visit City Hall without a police escort. 

Police Chief Davis changing MPD’s ‘top-heavy’ leadership structure

The Kendrick decree had forbidden the city from surveilling any group exercising its First Amendment rights unless part of a lawful criminal investigation.

“A majority of us are not trying to get on these Facebook groups and follow people and do this and that,” the officer said. “I don’t even think about doing that stuff.”

Pursuing change 

Schwartz, the professor of law at UCLA, said changing the culture of police departments often involves “outside intervention” from agencies such the DOJ. She said civil lawsuits, such as the one filed by Nichols’ family for $550 million in damages, often aren’t enough.

Challenges to a successful civil lawsuit include proving that a constitutional violation occurred; parties to the lawsuit may also not be required to pay damages because of qualified immunity, Schwartz said.

“Even after you win, it can be very difficult to make those cases impact future decisions by the department if the department isn’t bearing the costs of these cases,” Schwartz said, “and the officers aren’t bearing the cost of the cases.” 

Plea deals reached for officer charged in Tyre Nichols’ death

James Kirkwood, a retired MPD colonel and member of the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board, said the DOJ investigation should help MPD move forward.

“They will reveal what we are doing right, what we need to improve and what we are doing wrong,” Kirkwood said. “This is good for us, because sometimes you need to hear what others see about you after observing you. The DOJ will give us an assessment of our department to help us become the department we envision for our city.”

But, some say pattern-or-practice investigations aren’t a “silver bullet” either, merely serving as a Band-Aid to a problem while the investigation temporarily magnifies the issue.

“What they don’t typically do is actually measure whether or not policing is getting any better,” Alex Vitale, coordinator of the policing and social justice project and professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, said.

The Miami Police Department came under a pattern-or-practice investigation in 2002 and then in 2011. While the department appeared to course correct after the first investigation, many of the same issues arose less than a decade later.

New mayor wants pandemic-level response to crime

Where does culture come from? 

Dan Grossman, an Atlanta attorney who sued the Atlanta Police Department for its REDDOG Unit, said top department brass should be held accountable. 

“If you have a naval ship, and it grounds on a reef or something like that, the captain could have been asleep in his cabin and his junior officer could have had the conn,” Grossman said. “And it’s the junior officer who actually ran the ship onto the reef. But the captain is going to be held responsible, because it’s his ship that went aground.”

Currently, some Memphis City Council members are on the fence about Davis’ leadership, indicating an unclear future for the police chief. 

Although Mayor Young has re-appointed Davis as police chief, the Memphis City Council ultimately has the last say and will vote on whether to reappoint her Tuesday, Jan. 9. 

None of the 10 council members said they would vote against her, but several expressed apprehension about her reappointment. 

DOJ announces pattern and practice investigation into MPD

Days ahead of the vote, Davis told reporters she was confident in the progress she’s made within the city’s police department.

“We have made some significant progress, even though we would like to think that was an isolated incident,” Davis said. “But we’re not going to be so naive that we won’t do proactive work in the police department.”

Reporters Samuel Hardiman and Ben Wheeler contributed to this story.