The beating of a young African American revives demands for police reform in the US.

The fatal beating of young African American Tyrone Nichols by five policemen revived the demands of protesters and members Congress to change the culture in US police accused of using force disproportionately against the black community.

After the video of the beating Nicholsprominent figures in American politics, including the former President Barack Obamacalled for changes to how the various police forces in the country patrol the streets.

There were also protests in some cities, although they were much smaller than at other times, such as the death of African Americans. George Floyd in 2020 and Michael Brown in 2014, incidents that shocked the country and sparked days of continuous demonstrations.

These deaths, however, did not lead to significant reforms of state power. Police And this Sunday, the lawyer for the Nichols family, Ben Crumpasked in an interview in CNN: “How many of these tragedies do we need to see on video before they United States of America admit you have a problem?

krumpa well-known civil rights advocate, believed that there was a problem in the “culture” of the country’s various police departments that allowed agents, regardless of their race, to attack and violate the rights of members of the black community.

Five officers who beat Nichols they were black. They are all in custody and charged with various criminal offenses, including second-degree murder, punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison.

Agents arrested Nichols in what they claimed was a traffic stop, they forcibly dragged him out of the car and beat him, kicked him in the head, beat him with a truncheon, and even used a stun gun or a stun gun.

When the beating was over, the police dragged Nichols to the patrol car, they put it on the ground and punched it in celebration.

As the video shows, the last words he spoke Nichols, 29 years old, were: “Mom, mom, mom.” The young man had to wait 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to provide medical assistance, and in serious condition he was hospitalized, where he died three days later.

Hard road in Congress

In light of the cruelty of what happened, krump claimed that Congress is obliged to approve a major reform of the police to eradicate this kind of abuse once and for all.

However, the path is not easy. After the wave of protests that followed the death FloydRepublicans and Democrats negotiated for months last year to try and get reform, but those talks failed.

One of the most difficult points in the negotiations was the idea of ​​”legal immunity”, which makes it more difficult for victims to file suits against officers accused of disproportionate use of force.

Democrats want to remove police immunity, while Republicans want to keep it.

Moreover, if the deal was already difficult last year, when the Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress, now it is even more complicated by the fact that control of the Legislature has been divided: Republicans dominate both houses of Congress. low camera and Democrats have a majority in the Senate, even though they don’t have enough seats to legislate alone.

However, the senator Dick Durbinone of the most influential figures in the Democratic Party, believed that it was necessary to resume negotiations in order to approve a major police reform.

“At the national level, there should be a conversation about how the police can do their job in a responsible, constitutional and humane way,” Durbin told the network. ABC.

Changes in Memphis

At the local level memphis police (Tennessee), where Nichols died, announced some changes on Saturday.

In particular, he decided to disband the Escorpion unit, where the agents who beat Nichols and that it was created in 2021 with the aim of reducing violence in areas of the city that suffer the most from it.

It was in the protests of recent days that the demonstrators demanded the elimination of this type of police units throughout the country, which usually patrol the neighborhoods of the black community.

Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have repeatedly accused US police of using disproportionate violence against African Americans.

In fact, nearly a third of all people killed by police in the United States between 2013 and 2022 were blacks, despite making up just 13% of the country’s population, according to the organization. Mapping police violence.

(As reported by EFE)