This story was updated on May 27, 2025, with the correct spelling of Tyré Nichols name.
Standing before the Memphis City Council during a Jan. 9 committee meeting, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis defended her record.
Behind her, members of her police force held up signs saying, “We support Chief C.J. Davis.” Also at the front of the packed council chambers sat community activists, holding signs opposing Davis’ reappointment as chief.
Change has been hard to accomplish in the police department, Davis told council members, pointing at resistance among the “rank-and-file” officers.
“They’re not used to discipline at a level our community and our council expects,” Davis said. “They’re not used to various policies and procedures that take our department to a higher level. Change is uncomfortable for them, and it’s easy for them to say what they don’t like, but I know what is needed in a police department.”
The City Council will take up the vote on whether to approve Davis’ reappointment as chief of police at its next meeting on Tuesday. Although backed by both the new mayor, Paul Young, and the local NAACP, Davis’ reappointment is uncertain, with rising crime rates and the cloud of Tyré Nichols’ death weighing heavy during discussions with council members.
Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the firing of five Memphis police officers after the beating of Nichols. Those five officers have since been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault and more. One pleaded guilty to federal charges and will likely plead to state charges.
Jan. 27 marks the one-year anniversary since the city of Memphis released video of those officers stopping, chasing, pepper spraying and beating Nichols, videos released as Davis promised “honesty and transparency, and that there is absolute accountability for those responsible for Tyré’s death.”
But some Memphians say the police department and the city’s leadership have not taken a first, essential step toward accountability, which includes mending relationships between police and community members: Acknowledging and apologizing for harm committed. It’s part of a model of police reconciliation that’s been successful elsewhere yet has been tried before in Memphis and failed due to resistance from MPD leadership, according to one community leader.
That means ultimately, says Adam Nelson, a Memphian who works with DeCarcerate Memphis, Memphis has an “unaccountable police force.”
“They could tell the truth and keep their promises,” Nelson said. “That would be fundamentally a huge change, which I don’t expect us to get.”
Starting with ‘acknowledgment of harm’
Just months after the 2014 death of Michael Brown, the White House (then led by President Barack Obama) and the U.S. Department of Justice convened a task force on 21st-century policing, including a $5.75 million investment in the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice.
The pilot initiative in six cities sought to improve relationships between police and communities.
According to a 2018 paper published by the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College (which hosted the project), “The most promising efforts to overcome the distrust between police and minority communities, however, share these four components: (1) an acknowledgment of harm, (2) listening and narrative sharing, (3) fact finding, and (4) policy and practice changes.”
The paper defined “acknowledgment of harm” as, “A public acknowledgment by the police of harm they have done — as an institution, a department, or, at times, as an individual officer — and a commitment to improvement.” And, they wrote, the police department must “take the lead” on beginning reconciliation.
The paper also says why that acknowledgment process is important: “Owning and condemning past harms aligns the values of police with community.”
In Minneapolis, in 2016, where officers had shot and killed a 24-year-old Black man about six months before, the police chief met with community leaders, including her critics.
“It’s well known that to reduce violence in your community, you have to increase community trust. Those go hand in hand.”
Eric Jones, former Stockton, Calif. police chief
In the same year, in Birmingham, that city’s police chief met with civil rights leaders and contemporary activists.
“Not only did we do things wrong in the ’60s, we’ve done things wrong today,” he said.
The model was also used in West Las Vegas, Nevada, where the Safe Village Initiative sought “open and collaborative crime reduction” and included listening components, policy changes and apologies for both specific and general offenses.
In that city, in the year following the adoption of the initiative, homicides dropped 40% and gun-related crimes also dropped. Officers began to speak differently: They spoke of “our neighborhood” instead of “those people,” according to the report.
In Stockton, California, also one of the six cities, former Police Chief Eric Jones (who retired in 2021 and is now deputy county executive for public safety and justice at Sacramento County), was drawn to the reconciliation initiative as his department grappled with a record homicide rate alongside a police staffing shortage caused by the city’s bankruptcy.
“It’s well known that to reduce violence in your community, you have to increase community trust. Those go hand in hand,” Jones said.
In 2016, the official reconciliation effort in Stockton began, including Jones standing before a large African American church and acknowledging how the history of police dates to slave patrols and also apologizing for specific issues within the jurisdiction.
It took “courage” to do that, Jones said in an interview with MLK50, but he’d already spent the year prior preparing his officers, making sure they understood history and how police carry that burden.
The initiative didn’t stop with acknowledgment and apology, but included ongoing meetings with the public, implementation of concerns raised by the community and “sustained conversations,” Jones said.
“It’s over time,” he said. “You can’t just provide a statement or an acknowledgment or an apology and then say, ‘OK, we did that,’ and move on.”
Past reconciliation efforts fell flat
In 2012, the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center sought to use a similar model, bringing community members and police together for “Community and Police Reconciliation.” The program’s creation in Memphis followed a move away from community policing and toward hotspot-based policing, focusing on areas with higher crime statistics.
But the community-police reconciliation initiative was a failure in Memphis, lasting about two years, recalled Brad Watkins, who worked at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center at the time and eventually led the organization until 2019.
“In order for a community police reconciliation process to work, MPD has to be open to being accountable, and MPD has to go into these processes in good faith,” Watkins said. “They didn’t enter that process in good faith. Particularly the police union, who only sought to be disruptive to the process.”
Police were interested in public relations and interpersonal interactions, not in “taking any real responsibility or accountability,” Watkins said. While individual officers did come into the space “sincerely,” the union and police leadership resisted, he said.
That resistance included blaming the victims of negative encounters with police, refusing to acknowledge systemic problems in the department and threatening to walk away from the project whenever there was talk of systemic solutions, Watkins said. Police leadership participated in “gaslighting,” Watkins said, using problematic language like calling officers the “battered wives of the community.”
Would Watkins suggest this model today? “It would be foolish to try,” he said. “You can’t have reconciliation when one party isn’t sincere, and MPD wasn’t an honest broker. … It’s not the community’s job to reconcile with an entity that only exists to serve that community. It’s MPD’s job to reconcile with a community that it has harmed.”
“There is just an entrenched history of the Memphis Police Department and whoever is in office upholding the status quo, twisting themselves into pretzels to not do anything.”
Paul Garner, Memphis artist and activist
MPD did not respond to an inquiry from MLK50 as to whether this model of police-community reconciliation has been considered after Nichols’ death. The department also did not answer a question about why efforts to participate in the model with the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center did not last.
Jones, the former Stockton police chief, said he has strong opinions on who needs to take the lead on police-community reconciliation.
“That step has to be done by the police, and by the police executive,” he said. “The reason being, that is the person in power, so it’s incumbent upon (us). We’re the ones that hold the history and the burden.”
Paul Garner, a local artist and activist who previously worked with the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, said every time he tries to be optimistic about police reform, he is disappointed.
“It’s odd how reconciliation is sort of like a two-way street or something,” Garner said. “There is just an entrenched history of the Memphis Police Department and whoever is in office upholding the status quo, twisting themselves into pretzels to not do anything.”
‘Acting like they cared’
City leadership did acknowledge the horror of Nichols’ death. Davis called the video of his beating “appalling, inhumane.”
Yet, instead of acknowledging any culpability or even apologizing for Nichols’ death, officials in Memphis have said in court filings that the officers who beat Nichols were “rogue.” And, in an interview with The Commercial Appeal shortly before the end of his term, Mayor Jim Strickland said he did not believe an ongoing pattern or practice investigation into MPD would find any constitutional violations.
“If the allegation is made, first I’d like to look at that allegation and see if they’re true. But I don’t believe it’s true [that MPD violates the constitution],” he said.
That seems unlikely, says Christy Lopez, co-director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law. She said information publicly available indicates Memphis may have a pattern of rights violations.
Lopez previously worked with the Department of Justice, including leading the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division’s group that conducted pattern-or-practice investigations of law enforcement agencies.
“The Department of Justice generally does not initiate a pattern-or-practice investigation unless it’s pretty sure at the outset that it’s likely to find people’s rights are being systematically violated,” Lopez said.
“The accountability issue is really, really bad here in Memphis. The police, they think they can get away with murder, literally. They think they’re better than we are, and that’s not good.”
Marian Bacon, an advocate for disability rights who previously helped with MPD’s Crisis Intervention Team training
Still, when members of the City Council have attempted to enact change after Nichols’ death, they have been opposed by other leadership.
Days before his departure, Strickland told the City Council in a letter, first reported by MLK50, that his administration “has not been operating in accordance” with reform ordinances passed in the wake of Nichols’ death. Mayor Young has said his administration will enforce the ordinances.
Davis later contradicted Strickland, saying the department did enact those ordinances. Several times at City Council, she mentioned a willingness to share proof of their enactment. When asked to share that proof, MPD told MLK50 to file a records request, a request not yet fulfilled.
One of the ordinances required the publication of traffic stop data six months after passage, data not yet published. Another ordinance requires police not to make traffic stops solely for low-level offenses like a broken brake light.
In the Jan. 9 City Council meeting, Council Chairman JB Smiley Jr. spoke of how pretextual stops have continued, describing one stop in particular. That stop occurred the day before a vigil to remember Nichols’ death. The person stopped? Tyré Nichols’ brother, Smiley said.
While recent incidents like that one show the community not much has changed, past negative police encounters show why taking that first step toward accountability matters.
Marian Bacon, an advocate for disability rights who used to help with MPD’s Crisis Intervention Team training, recalls police pulling over her Uber driver several years ago. Police said the driver was speeding, but Bacon said she’d been watching the speedometer and knew they weren’t over the speed limit.
Police let the driver go with a warning, but the incident shook Bacon.
“The accountability issue is really, really bad here in Memphis,” Bacon said. “The police, they think they can get away with murder, literally. They think they’re better than we are, and that’s not good.”
If Davis is kept by the city, she should go to meetings with the public to discuss accountability, Bacon said.
“I think if that happened, a lot more citizens would be willing to listen to them,” she said.
Amber Sherman, who works with the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter, said city officials who promised reform “were just putting on a show and pretending like they were gonna follow the ordinances, knowing they weren’t.
“A lot of folks are concerned because you have this urgent police response where police were acting like they cared, but it’s very clear the top brass, the police chief, the people around her aren’t following them,” Sherman said.
Davis also refused to take accountability for the creation of the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood Unit — known as the SCORPION unit — whose members included the officers who beat Nichols. The city disbanded the unit after Nichols’ death.
Strickland wrote in a January 2022 newsletter that, “At the end of last year, Chief Davis created the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods Unit.” Councilman Chase Carlisle read parts of that newsletter out loud in the Jan. 9 committee meeting, pointing out that Davis did not contradict that narrative at the time.
“I know as a city councilperson you have a lot to pay attention to, but you should absolutely be paying attention to what the specialized units in your police department are doing.”
Christy Lopez, co-director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law
Davis described the newsletter as “an opportunity, I guess, for the previous administration to have some speaking points.”
Earlier, she said, “I’m not a liar. I don’t have to be a liar. I’m trying to work to make sure our police department rises to another level.”
Lopez said she isn’t sure why Davis would disavow the creation of SCORPION, particularly when she was also involved with the similar Red Dog Unit in Atlanta.
“As the chief of police, you’re expected to take responsibility for pretty much everything that happens under your watch, and certainly the establishment of an entire unit couldn’t happen without your approval,” Lopez said. “That strikes me as odd. … I do think it’s important to recognize that it’s not just a police department and a police chief that bears responsibility for the creation of a unit like SCORPION. It’s the entire city.”
And that culpability goes from a mayor who supports the unit and touts its arrests to a City Council that does not push back on the creation of the unit, Lopez said.
“If we are not getting the results we need and deserve, we’ll go another way. But right now, I firmly believe we have the right person, and I stand behind that.”
Memphis Mayor Paul Young on retaining Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis as police chief
“There’s a lesson there. I know as a city councilperson you have a lot to pay attention to, but you should absolutely be paying attention to what the specialized units in your police department are doing,” she said.
Ultimately, during the Jan. 9 meeting, council members indicated they may not vote to reappoint Davis. Seven voted against her reappointment in committee, a nonbinding vote, while six voted in favor.
During a conversation in that committee meeting, Councilman Jeff Warren said, “Some of what I’m hearing from the officers is I don’t think they feel like you’ve owned up to your role in that (SCORPION) unit being formed the way it was, and that may be part of the missing piece there where the trust factor may be gone.”
Young, the new mayor, has emphatically stood by Davis as his appointee for chief.
“Can we get the buy-in from the officers? Absolutely,” Young told council members. “Are there things we have to do to gain trust from the officers and the community? Absolutely. But I wouldn’t make this recommendation if I didn’t think we could do it. … All of our fates are riding on us getting this right. As I said in the beginning, I am going to be accountable to you all. If we are not getting the results we need and deserve, we’ll go another way. But right now, I firmly believe we have the right person, and I stand behind that.”
More than ‘bad apples’
Watkins, who is now a consultant with several organizations, said he often hears the “bad apples rhetoric” used to absolve the police department of wrongdoing but pointed out that “they’re even using the term wrong.”
“It’s not about a few bad apples making the rest look bad,” Watkins said. “It’s a warning against tolerating corruption. As in, ‘A few bad apples spoils the whole bunch.’ Because if you don’t deal with corruption, it spreads.”
Community groups hope to at least accomplish components three and four of the accountability model: data keeping and policy change. Adam Nelson, who also works with DeCarcerate, said the organization is working on an updated version of the “Driving While BIPOC” report they presented to the City Council in the fall of 2022. The city has so far not responded to his public information request for traffic data. While they took 40 days to fulfill the request last year, it has been about four months since his most recent request.
Already, despite Davis’ denials, DeCarcerate has received anecdotal evidence that pretextual traffic stops, barred by the City Council’s ordinance last spring, have continued to occur.
That, and the beating of Nichols, counteracts the “bad apples” rhetoric, Nelson said.
“How many personnel are now confirmed to have been on site in the aftermath of Tyré Nichols being beat to death?” Nelson asked. “That is a systemic investment in that kind of violence. … That kind of operation is happening all over the city every night to this day. (Officers) drive around in neighborhoods where there are Black people, look for reasons to pull them over and go fishing for drugs or weapons in the car. That’s what policing looks like in Memphis and what gets people killed.”
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
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