Ben Wheeler is an investigative reporter and is a member of The Daily Memphian’s public safety reporting team. He previously worked at the Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan and Herald-Citizen.
There are 175 articles by Ben Wheeler :
”Even if you have a fire truck at the end of the street, why weren’t they up there regardless of what the guy did? You know what I’m saying. If he was needing help, he laid there too long needing help with nobody right there.”
Case notes filed by a lieutenant in the Memphis Police Department’s Internal Services Bureau said that just hours after the traffic stop, they knew the force exerted on Tyre Nichols was excessive.
The notes detailing the immediate internal investigation are a part of the thousands of pages of documents the City of Memphis released Wednesday, Feb. 14.
“People living with HIV should not be subjected to a different system of justice based on outdated science and misguided assumptions,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a news release.
The officer’s’ decertification was postponed and his law enforcement certification was suspended as he has filed a grievance against the Memphis Police Department regarding his employment status.
An additional police officer, previously unidentified, was fired for his part in a traffic stop that occurred Jan. 7, the same night Tyre Nichols was stopped by MPD.
One former Memphis Police officer contested his decertification before the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, and three more did not appear for the hearings.
“She’s literally just in a hospital gown, with nothing else on. She can’t walk,” an Uber driver said of a passenger picked up. “And I’m thinking, it’s getting dark. It’s about to rain. This is a perfect storm for something terrible to happen to a person.”
After federal court clerks told The Daily Memphian it needed to file a formal motion for the footage, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press did so, requesting the video on behalf of the local news site in January.
The newly released footage shows other altercations between inmates at the Shelby County Jail and corrections officers. Related stories: Jail cell photos, autopsy show ‘intolerable treatment,' lawyer says
The mother of a man who was fatally shot by Memphis Police Department officers in December 2022 has retained an attorney in her federal lawsuit against the city. The DA’s did not file any criminal charges against the involved officers.
The city did not confirm the MOU is part of a Department of Justice pattern-or-practice investigation, but one expert told The Daily Memphian it likely is a “perfunctory” step in that process.
A former Shelby County Sheriff’s captain failed to show up for her hearing with the POST Commission on Thursday leading to a recommendation that she be decertified as a law enforcement officer.
Tyre Nichols’ parents have released a letter asking to sit down with Gov. Bill Lee before he signs a bill that would ban traffic stop ordinances like the one passed by the Memphis City Council. Tyre Nichols’ parents furious after meeting with state Sen. Brent TaylorRelated story:
Decertification of an SCSO captain was delayed Friday because of question whether she was properly notified of a hearing.
The Wells family released a letter Friday pleading with Gov. Bill Lee to meet with them before he signs the bill into law, appealing to the promise he made to them in 2023.
After MPD announced a new first-line supervisory rank — second lieutenant — and promotion process in February of last year, the police union filed a grievance.
“This 24-hour ballistics lab can also provide us with expanded ability to retrieve serial numbers that have been obliterated from guns, which is also something that is important,” Mulroy said.
A December 2023 deposition provides testimony from assistant chief jailer George Askew about the state of the Shelby County jail and how it’s run. Former sheriff asks why 201 Poplar seems to be going backwardRelated story:
“We were able to remedy the problem,” said former Shelby County Sheriff and former county mayor Mark Luttrell. “Why did the remedy not stay in place?”
Jessie Dotson was convicted of the six-murder scene in 2010 and currently sits on death row in Nashville.
The City of Memphis has filed a petition to vacate the results of arbitration between the Memphis Police Department and the Memphis Police Association over the creation of the second lieutenant rank.
MPD’s establishment of the second lieutenant field supervisor role was meant to fill a gap within the force. But after arbitration and further negotiations, the process has left officers divided.
MPD and its police union disagree over the recent creation of a frontline supervisor role, but Memphis Mayor Paul Young says the second lieutenant rank is needed to avoid another U.S. Department of Justice consent decree.
A lack of solid, shared data across the local public safety system’s multiple agencies has led to plenty of discrepancies, and the Memphis Police Department’s homicide clearance rate stands as a stark example.