Lessons from Memphis
This week the city of Memphis laid Tyre Nichols to rest. But the questions raised by his brutal murder remain. Mr. Nichols should have had a long life. He should have been able to grow old, surrounded by the love of family and friends.
His death has brought forward a larger conversation on the depth of structural racism in this country and the limitations of reform efforts. As Peniel Joseph wrote recently in the Boston Globe:
Nichols would be alive today if America had embraced an abolitionist perspective on punishment, prison, and policing that recognizes more of the same will only produce further preventable tragedies. Nichols’s death reflects a broken system, one wherein armed police routinely turn traffic or even pedestrian stops into violent and deadly confrontations with unarmed citizens. But it is also just the tip of the iceberg.
Joseph goes on to call for a “rethinking” about what has become normal. He says:
The surveillance, harassment, weaponization of fines and fees, brutality, and death experienced by Black people at the hands of law enforcement have become so routine that the nation responds only to the promise of spectacular Black death at this point. Just witness the countdown to the release of the Nichols video that had media gathered around like officials and spectators in the Roman Colosseum awaiting the visceral rush of that era’s version of blood sport.
This rethinking is a critical part of how we begin to imagine a different future. Here in Detroit, it provides a new urgency in resisting the continued efforts by police and the mayor to increase technologies of surveillance.
While much of the footage of the attack on Mr. Nichols was captured on the surveillance system known as SkyCop, the reality is that this system has contributed to the atmosphere of violence and dehumanization. It certainly did not stop the death of Mr. Nichols. It has not contributed to making neighborhoods safe.
SkyCop is the Memphis equivalent of Project Green Light. For $10 million, cameras cover the city providing real time coverage to the police central command center. Neighborhoods, parks, stores, gas stations and churches are monitored with the idea that surveillance will deter crime and make neighborhoods safer. The cameras are mounted with blinking blue lights and linked with other advanced technologies. Police use artificial intelligence to identify people with specific pieces of clothing, have facial recognition capacities, can detect gunshots with ShotSpotter, and are able to broadcast directives directly into communities.
All this technological capacity has not reduced crime. In 2021 the Daily Memphian did a careful study of SkyCop and found:
Violent crime rates in the city had consistently climbed, outpacing the state and country, over the years the cameras were installed. The cameras were mentioned in less than 3 percent of the more than 74,000 crime reports filed that year, including only one of the 228 murders.
The headline of the article summed it up. “10 years. $10 million. 2,100 SkyCop cameras. And a crime increase of 57%.”
Technologies of control do not make us safe. This is more than simply thinking about alternative ways we could use $10 million to fund youth programs, housing protection, mental health clinics or parks. It is the recognition that technologies cannot solve human problems.
Our task is to repair the community connections that strengthen our bonds to each other, that enable us to expand our concern and compassion. This is why initiatives in Detroit like Green Chairs, Not Green Lights, are so important. They emphasize that taking responsibility for looking out for each other is the only path toward safe, vibrant, and liberated lives. This is the core of the lesson from Memphis.