There’s an old saying: “Hurt people hurt people.” You could also say that “traumatized people traumatize other people.” If not identical, the two are definitely intertwined.
Healing the hurt and treating the trauma are heavy on my mind as I take in two high profile murder trials happening simultaneously here in the Bluff City. Both cases have something to say about the ripple effects of trauma.
As I write this, two former officers involved in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols have taken the stand in the trial of three others, as part of their respective plea agreements. Last week, Emmitt Martin III confessed to jurors that Nichols was “helpless” as they pummelled him in January 2023, and this week Desmond Mills Jr. cried on the stand in remorse, saying, “I’m sorry. I know sorry can’t bring him back.”
Martin and Mills were testifying against their former SCORPION unit comrades Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who are on trial in federal court for the crime.
In a completely different courtroom and case, Cornelius Smith Jr. confessed in court to firing into Makeda’s Cookies on Airways Blvd. at his target, popular rapper and philanthropist Young Dolph in November 2021. Once he was apprehended, Smith said he lied at first but eventually told prosecutors that “I came to my senses and decided to tell the truth.”
Smith was testifying against Justin Johnson, whom he says was right next to him firing into the cookie shop.
Though jurors have yet to hear the defense in either case, it’s hard to imagine not guilty verdicts, especially with such potent and powerful confessions. And while genuine expressions of remorse may feel pointless and hollow, that remorse counts for something, right? The fact that Martin said his crime was “eating him up inside” and Mills shed tears over “making (Nichols’) kids fatherless,” . . . well, it shows that they’re hurting, right?
Which brings us back to the hurt and the trauma — as in, “What kind of hurt would drive any of these men to commit that kind of trauma on another?”
As it turns out, the sworn testimonies would shed some light on that as well.
In the Nichols’ case, Martin said he’d been injured in November 2022, when he was hit by a suspect fleeing in a car. He said he’d been diagnosed with PTSD from the incident, and was struggling with sleeplessness, paranoia, anger issues and “homicidal thoughts” when it all exploded out of him that fateful night.
Martin may have looked fine on the outside. But on the inside, he was hurting. “Mentally, something was wrong” with Martin, Mills said. In hindsight, given the trauma of being hit by a car, and having expressed “homicidal thoughts” to a colleague, he had no business being on the street.
Weird, isn’t it? All this time, we’ve said the murder of Tyre Nichols was senseless. But I don’t know if that’s true. Tragic? Of course. Unnecessary? Without question.
But senseless? No, it makes perfect sense: a hard-charging street unit with at least one officer suffering from PTSD and homicidal thoughts. No telling what the other officers have seen and experienced that scarred them – that hurt them so bad they took it out on Tyre.
In Young Dolph’s case, another tragedy preceded this one. Smith testified that he was a father of six children until 2020, claiming he was a “good worker” for Germantown City Schools, presumably trying to leave the streets behind.
Then his 9-year old son died in 2020.
“That had an impact on you?” the prosecutor asked. “Did it cause you to take up some old habits?”
“Yes sir,” Smith calmly replied on the stand. “I went back to popping pills and not caring about nothing.” When the prosecutor asked if the old friends were “trouble,” Smith chuckled and replied, “We all trouble. I’m going to say that we all are.”
Similarly, in the Young Dolph trial, Smith’s confession points to how difficult it is to fully escape from the streets. Even if we take him at his word that he was a good worker and was presumably trying to grow into a productive citizen, it’s not hard to see how the trauma of losing a child could derail that.
Shooting up a cookie store in broad daylight? I can’t relate. But popping pills and giving up on life? That doesn’t sound like a stretch when you’re mourning a child.
I guess what I’m getting at is this: Even as justice is served in these two trials, we must acknowledge the pain that caused these two tragedies.
We have to acknowledge that our police officers (and first responders in general) see, hear and experience truly terrible things that can haunt them as much as any veteran coming back from war. They need mental health services as much as anyone, maybe more than most. We need to make sure we’re not sending traumatized officers out there to traumatize others. And that’s the easy problem to solve.
It’s going to be much harder to help heal the trauma that Memphis is dealing with — if for no other reason than not only do traumatic events keeps happening, they ripple. I haven’t even mentioned that Smith said he was arrested for Dolph’s murder on his daughter’s birthday.
Imagine that child, having already lost a sibling, with “fond” memories of her daddy going to jail. For murder. On her birthday. Trauma on top of trauma. Hurt piled on hurt.
We’re going to need to generate some love and compassion to break this cycle and start a new one. Some patience, because it will take generations. We’ll need to give each other some grace, some slack — even when we are hurting, even when we’ve been traumatized. We’re going to have to get better at forgiving and turning the other cheek.
We’re going to have to learn how to look past the bad behavior of our fellow citizens and see the pain that drives their behavior — then apply love, compassion and kindness so that healing can occur.
If we don’t do these things — if we can’t — we’re in for a world of hurt.
Lee Eric Smith is an award-winning NNPA and Tennessee Press Association columnist. He is currently the Interim Editor of the Tri-State Defender.
