Do 'elite' police teams like Memphis's SCORPION unit do more harm than good?
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2023
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Special police units like the now-disbanded SCORPION team in Memphis are common around the country. Police chiefs say they’re essential for fighting crime. Critics say their elite status and lack of accountability is a recipe for abuse.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is on point. I'm Begna Chakrabardi. The Special Memphis Police Unit involved in the |
| 0:13.2 | beating death of Tyree Nichols has now been disbanded. But similar units exist in other |
| 0:19.0 | American cities. Lawmakers and law enforcement leadership say the units are especially important |
| 0:25.4 | to suppress crime in victimized neighborhoods. Is that true? Are they effective? And how often |
| 0:33.0 | are these specialized police units involved in cases of egregious police violence? Well, |
| 0:39.9 | Seth Stoten was once a patrolman on the Tallahassee Florida police force. Today he's a professor |
| 0:45.3 | of law and criminology at the University of South Carolina. He has studied the body cam |
| 0:50.4 | videos of what happened to Tyree Nichols, framed by frame. I was an officer for about five years. |
| 0:56.6 | I made or assisted with literally hundreds of arrests used force on a number of occasions against |
| 1:03.8 | individuals who were trying to get away or otherwise. And I never saw anything like this from |
| 1:09.7 | my colleagues. Stoten describes some of what shocked him most as a former police officer. |
| 1:15.1 | Over the course of the encounter, you see officers striking Mr. Nichols about the head and face with |
| 1:22.3 | closed fists while he's on the ground. You see them apparently holding Mr. Nichols while |
| 1:27.3 | another officer strikes him in the head with what is at least at times a closed fist. You see |
| 1:33.1 | officers holding Mr. Nichols on the ground while another officer kicks him. You see officers using |
| 1:39.3 | baton, taser and pepper spray. The officers had also pulled Nichols out of the car. An action |
| 1:47.3 | Stoten says is novert violation of standard policing procedure, especially in light of the fact |
| 1:52.9 | that Stoten sees no indication in the video that the officers ever thought Tyree Nichols |
| 1:58.6 | posed a threat. There are a couple of specific things that suggest that it would be a real stretch |
| 2:04.7 | for officers to say that they were afraid that Mr. Nichols was going to hurt them. Early on in |
| 2:10.1 | the videos, you see an officer opening his driver's side door and physically reaching in and pulling |
| 2:16.6 | Mr. Nichols out. That's a really bad idea on a pure tactical level. For an officer to reach into |
... |
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