“Everything was wrong,” Randy Sutton says of the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, who was 29, at the hands of Memphis Police Department officers.
The fate of Nichols began with a late-night traffic stop by officers assigned to a high-crime strike team known as SCORION. After viewing the fatal footage, Sutton says he was shocked at the lack of basic police techniques when the police officers pulled over Nichols. Their lack of professionalism, he says, shows a lack of training.
“Literally, from the moment of the car stop until the blows that were struck on this young man,” Sutton tells AFN, “everything was wrong.”
Memphis has been losing police officers to the point that approximately 1,300 have left MPD in a single decade. The police department was short approximately 500 officers when it was rocked by Nichols’ death and the arrest of its own uniformed cops for his murder.
As if the situation isn't bad enough, the lack of officers on the streets is especially troublesome for a city of 628,000 that is infamous for crimes rates that lead much larger cities in the nation.
'They destroy their own standards'
In light of the “Defund the Police” movement, Sutton has warned that good police officers are being unfairly targeted by liberal politicians trying to appease an angry mob. In the case of the City of Memphis, he says, its politicians are guilty of letting just about anyone wear a uniform just to fill a slot.
According to an Associated Press story, MPD was offering new recruits $15,000 signing bonuses and dropped qualification standards that included either college credits, military service, or previous law enforcement work. The police academy dropped physical fitness standards and even dropped running, the AP story said.
Once the AP started digging after Nichols’ death, it learned one of the officers charged with murder had a prior arrest and a second officer, a former jailer, was accused of beating an inmate.
“What do these departments do in order to combat that and try and at least put a body in a uniform?” he asks rhetorically. “They go and they destroy their own standards.”
According to Sutton, he makes no excuses for the Memphis officers facing a murder trial but he maintains the “Defund the Police” can be traced to Marxist prosecutors who view criminals as victims of society and all cops as the bad guys.
“This has been a crisis but it's a crisis by design,” he insists. “None of this that is happening is an accident. It has been carefully plotted and planned, much of it funded by George Soros and his minions.”
Sure enough, that man's name is Steve Mulroy.
The Commercial Appeal, the Memphis daily newspaper, reported last year that voters there had elected a "progressive" candidate for Shelby County prosecutor. Mulroy had campaigned on "diversifying" the prosecutor's office, creating a conviction review unit, and taking a "second look" at bail policies.
