"Even as city officials credited Scorpion officers with bringing down violent crime, their presence had spread fear in the predominantly low-income neighborhoods they patrolled..."

"... according to interviews with dozens of people in the community.... 'Police out here riding around like hound dogs,' said Lareta Johnson Ray, whose family members wound up in a violent encounter with the unit’s officers after running from them last summer. The Scorpion unit was 'terrorizing this city,' Ms. Ray said, and Mr. Nichols’s death was 'not the first time that they be beating on people — it was the first time that they messed up.'... In encounter after encounter, Memphis residents said, the Scorpions had a similar playbook: Officers would spot some minor infraction, jump out and begin asking questions and barking commands. Some said the officers offered no explanation about what they had done wrong, leading to confusion and sometimes disobedience. Some of those interviewed said they had tried to run away, in part, out of pure fear."

 
From "Muscle Cars, Balaclavas and Fists: How the Scorpions Rolled Through Memphis/Residents say the street crime unit has been an intimidating and sometimes violent presence in the city. Five Scorpion officers are charged with murdering Tyre Nichols during an arrest" (NYT). 

"Many of the Scorpion officers remain on the force, and it is unclear how many operated with the aggressive tactics that arrestees detailed in interviews. Michalyn Easter-Thomas, a member of the City Council, said she did not hear about the volatile encounters people had with the Scorpion unit until after Mr. Nichols’s death. 'I just wish we would have known sooner,' she said."

Wish?! Isn't it your job to know? Didn't you know?

This is a long article, and I recommend it, but I was motivated to search the page for the word "Democrat." It does not appear. Even when the mayor is named, we are not told his party. There should be political responsibility. The article makes that clear, but it declines to make Democrats uncomfortable. Immoral priorities.

"I've never seen the video. But what I’ve heard is very horrific, very horrific. And any of you who have children, please don’t let them see it."

"To the five police officers that murdered my son, you also disgraced your own families when you did this. I’m going to pray for you and your families, because at the end of the day, this shouldn’t have happened. This just shouldn’t have happened. We want justice for my son, justice for my son.” 

Said RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’s mother, quoted in "Tyre Nichols Live Updates: Memphis to Release ‘Appalling’ Police Video/People who have seen the footage say it shows five police officers, who have been fired and charged with murder, beating Mr. Nichols, who died three days later. His family and officials have called for peaceful protest" (NYT).

"Black children suffer disproportionately from 'zero tolerance' disciplinary policies under which they are suspended and expelled...."

"Black boys are three times as likely to be suspended as White boys.... I’m not proud of my actions. But if White people want to help the push for racial equity in education, they need to own their role in perpetuating racist practices. I was not equipped for my job when I first entered my 10th-12th grade classroom at one of the poorest high schools in Memphis.... My students resented me for being so severe; I learned that they complained about me to their other teachers. Once, my overuse of discipline elicited a revolt: After I’d sent an 11th-grader to the principal’s office for talking over me repeatedly, the rest of the class put their heads face down on their desks, tossed their pencils to the floor and refused to carry on with the lesson in solidarity with their classmate.... A few months into my first year of teaching, Black Lives Matter came to dominate the news cycle.... I wished I had learned my lesson sooner.... Many other White educators have told me similar stories from their classrooms. We unintentionally perpetuated a broken system we had set out to dismantle.... The fate of far too many American children is still in the hands of inexperienced White educators who know no better than to uphold a system that lets people slip through the cracks. 'Zero tolerance' disciplinary policies must be dismantled, and schools must rebuild such policies to be explicitly anti-racist. Meanwhile, for the rest of my life, I’ll dream of the look on my students’ faces right before they were expelled. They all wore the same recognition of deep-set injustice, the dawning realization that their futures were being taken from them before they even had a chance to graduate from high school."

From "I was a well-meaning White teacher. But my harsh discipline harmed Black kids" by Liz Posner (WaPo). 

The most up-voted comment says: "She was not a teacher. A 'Teach for America'-er. Didn't train to be a teacher. Didn't plan to be a teacher. Planned always to be a writer. Decided to swoop in and save the poor underprivileged children. For two whole years. And, uh, write about it. Not using them at all...."

Posner's own webpage supports that factual assertion: "Liz is a lifelong writer, editor and advocate for social justice. She writes frequently about feminism, education, and justice issues for various publications. While working as a high school Spanish instructor with Teach for America in Memphis, Tennessee, she wrote a novel about low-income students and teachers. As a a writer and editor, she is dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized people everywhere.... Liz has known she was destined for a writing career since the 5th grade...."