What would have saved Tyre Nichols’ life? | Derecka Purnell

All of the reforms that liberals suggest will save Black lives were present in Tyre's death. So what works?

The heartbreak and anger in writing about police is that they never run out of people to kill.

Right after I learned about the cop who killed Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, a protester against the multimillion-dollar police facility that the City of Atlanta is tearing down a forest to construct, I learned about Tyre Nichols. Tyre was a young, Black man who loved to skateboard and take pictures. Memphis police department cops stopped him in a vehicle on January 7. He ran - which is reasonable because cops routinely kill Black people and he wanted to live. Cops often punish people who flee, just like the cops who took Freddie Gray on a rough ride" for running in 2015. MPD beat him and took him to the hospital. He died three days later.

Derecka Purnell is a Guardian US columnist. She is also a social movement lawyer and writer based in Washington, DC. She is the author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom