Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst.

Protests took place around the country overnight, mostly peaceful following the release of video,

showing Memphis police brutally beating Tyrene Nichols, who died three days later.

Five black police officers have been fired and they face murder charges.

Tennessee State Representative Joe Towns Jr.

praised the peaceful demonstrations and called for more in Memphis and elsewhere.

We have to protest, but it didn't such a dignified way.

You can hear the echoes of the chance.

We're going to do it like Mama said.

Mama said she wanted what?

Peace for protests.

Meanwhile, Memphis City Councilmember Jeff Warren says the police force is understaffed

by hundreds of officers.

He says it doesn't have enough police supervisors on the streets of Memphis.

In the Memphis Police Department, we're down 500 officers from our compliment.

We need 2,500 officers to be able to patrol the city.

And we've been working on 18, 1900, 2,000 officers.

So we're down by 20%.

So that means everyone's working every time.

And today, Memphis police say they are permanently deactivating the scorpion unit

that the five officers who killed Nichols belong to.

A Fulton County judge is weighing whether to release the findings of the special grand jury

...