RowVaughn Wells had been dealing with a headache for days when she stepped to the mic to make remarks on the third anniversary of the events that took the life of her son, Tyre Nichols.
“I’m really tired and my stomach is killing me right now, and I have a terrible headache,” Wells said just a few yards from the spot where Nichols was brutally beaten. “What people don’t understand is that while today is (Wednesday, Jan. 7), I’ve been grieving since Saturday because Saturday to me will always be the day.
“And then this Saturday will be the official death date of my son, Jan. 10. All I can say is, and I’m gonna just … ” Wells trailed off, before continuing.
“People don’t know what we are going through right now.”
Candles spelling out “Tyre” lit the pavement where the assault happened as about 100 people gathered at Castlegate Lane to commemorate Nichols’ life. Activists, citizens and elected officials all led chants of “Justice for Tyre” on an unseasonably warm winter night — with Wells feeling no closer to justice.
“ There’s a lot of people that do know what we’re going through, but a lot of these city officials and all this, they don’t know what our family is going through because they never had to deal with it,” Wells told the crowd. “We need justice and it just seems like it’s just some kind of game or something, you know?”
“It’s like it’s some kind of game,” she continued, “and, and I just don’t understand because my son lost his life.”
The Tyre Nichols case remains one of the clearest, most complicated snapshots of where policing, politics and justice collide in Memphis: swift firings and fast charges, followed by split verdicts, reversals, federal intervention, local pushback and a reform process that is still being debated in real time.
What follows are 10 lessons — not tidy conclusions, but the clearest things Memphis has learned so far.
1) SCORPION could kill.
Nichols’ beating wasn’t carried out by a random patrol team. The five officers at the center of the case were members of MPD’s now-disbanded SCORPION unit — short for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods — a specialized “crime suppression” team created to saturate high-crime areas with proactive enforcement and rapid responses to gun violence and street crime.
The caught-on-camera murder of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of a white Minneapolis policeman had clear parallels to the Nichols case. It also confirmed what many residents had long argued: When “elite” enforcement teams are built around intensity, discretion and a mission to be aggressive, the margin for accountability narrows — and the risk of catastrophe grows.
The case also cut in a way Memphis wasn’t prepared for. The officers involved were Black, as was Nichols — a reality that complicated the national narrative but did not complicate the facts. For many Memphians, it underscored a bitter point: The danger wasn’t simply who wore the badge, but what the badge wearer was being asked — and permitted — to do, in the name of restoring “peace.”
2) It is possible to police the police — at least at the front end.
Memphis’ initial response was unusually fast and direct. The officers were suspended, then fired. The SCORPION unit was disbanded. Criminal cases moved quickly. National civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Memphis “should be the blueprint” for how officer misconduct is handled.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis released department video of the incident without prompting or filtering, choosing transparency over controlling the narrative.
“Those five officers have left a terrible stain on, not only our department, but on our city,” Davis told the Tri-State Defender at the time. “Their actions have completely nullified our efforts to foster a closer relationship with our community.”
3) Not all bad cops are white
In almost all high-profile officer-involved incidents, racial dynamics follow an easy narrative — conservative white cop unleashes violence on urban black males. It’s a well-earned narrative dating back to the era of Jim Crow and segregation.
But the fact that all five former Memphis officers were black — and arguably should have “known better” (whatever that would mean) — shifts the narrative, putting the focus squarely on what Davis called “bad actors” in the department. The names of those former officers are Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr., Emmitt Martin, and Justin Smith.
“Race was not a factor in how I dealt with this very serious matter,” she said in Jan. 2023. “Black, white, or multi-color — anyone bringing that level of disgrace on this department will get the same.”
The Afro American Police Association — founded in part to prove that effective policing could happen without brutality — called the officers “monstrous males,” and AAPA leaders framed the beating as a blow not just to Nichols’ family, but to decades of work for legitimacy and trust. 
Retired MPD Lt. Tyrone Currie put it in a line that still stings: “What we’ve been working on for 50 years, they destroyed in three minutes.” 
4) We learned: Chief Davis can take the heat — and so can Memphis politics.
In the year after Nichols’ death, Davis became a lightning rod — praised by some for moving swiftly to fire officers and disband SCORPION, blamed by others for empowering the kind of aggressive, specialized enforcement culture that critics say can metastasize into abuse.
The political pressure didn’t stay abstract. In January 2024, a Memphis City Council committee took steps that signaled Davis’ support at City Hall had become shaky, even as Mayor Paul Young was still settling into office.
Young ultimately stuck with Davis, although leaving her in an interim posture for much of 2024. By January 2025, the City Council voted unanimously to remove the interim label. Together, Young and Davis have made sweeping changes to public safety, including adding hundreds of AI-powered cameras, strategically targeting the most violent offenders and funding community organizations to help prevent crime.
People still want changes within MPD, but few are still calling for Davis to be terminated — which is saying something given the next thing we learned.
5) The problem was worse than anyone wanted to admit.
In December 2024, the Department of Justice, under then President Biden’s administration, released findings that went beyond Nichols. The report concluded MPD engages in excessive force and discriminatory policing, including unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and troubling interactions with children and people in behavioral health crises.
The findings were scathing not just for what they alleged, but for what they implied: Nichols’ beating wasn’t an unthinkable outlier. It was a headline in a larger story about training, supervision and a culture that too often escalates instead of stabilizes. 
“The practices we uncovered harm and demean people,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. “They promote distrust and undermine the fundamental safety mission of a police department.”
6) “Police reform” is also a power struggle — federal consent decree or local control.
In the wake of the findings, Young publicly resisted immediate DOJ-driven consent decree oversight, arguing Memphis could make faster, more meaningful change through local work guided by community input and independent experts — without “bureaucratic, costly and complicated” federal control.
Young appointed a task force and an independent monitoring structure led by retired federal Judge Bernice Donald. “I’m willing to put my reputation on the line because I deeply believe that this is important work for our city,” Young said. 
In other words, the fight hasn’t only been about what changes are needed but who gets to enforce them, how transparent the process is, and what happens if the city falls short.
7) Justice is not a straight line and verdicts can split the city.
The court outcomes have been dizzying and, for many Memphians, disorienting.
In federal court, a jury convicted three former officers on obstruction-related charges tied to what prosecutors described as efforts to shape the story after Nichols was beaten, while delivering mixed results on the most severe allegations. Then, in state court in May 2025, a Tennessee jury acquitted three former officers on all counts — a result that stunned many residents who believed the video made the case open-and-shut.
Then came another twist: A judge later ordered a new trial on portions of the federal case, reopening questions that many people assumed were settled.
“We’ve had some setbacks and we’ve learned some bitter lessons,” said Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy at Wednesday’s vigil. “I’ve learned some bitter lessons. I’ve learned a lesson about the tendency of jurors to give the benefit of the doubt to police to an almost absurd length.”
8) “Cops cry,” too, and that doesn’t settle anything.
Two former officers entered plea deals and later testified against others. In one of your most pointed frames, the case exposed not only brutality but the trauma inside institutions that carry weapons and authority.
On the stand, Desmond Mills Jr. wept and apologized: “I’m sorry. I know sorry can’t bring him back.” 
Emmitt Martin III described Nichols as “helpless,” words that sounded less like a defense than an autopsy of conscience. 
The testimony complicated what many people wanted — a simple story with villains who feel nothing. But remorse doesn’t equal accountability, and pain doesn’t erase harm. It only adds another layer to what Memphis has to confront.
9) The federal government can change course, and local consequences follow.
In May 2025, the Justice Department, now under President Trump, announced it was retracting Biden-era findings of constitutional violations in several police agencies, including Memphis — part of a broader rollback framed as rejecting “overbroad” consent decrees and “micromanagement” by courts and monitors. 
For Memphis, the message was blunt: Federal pressure is not guaranteed to last. If reform is going to happen — and be believed — the city will have to prove it with transparent benchmarks and durable policy.
10) Headlines fade, but the wound still hurts — and the bill is still coming due.
For the Nichols family, anniversaries don’t arrive as milestones. They arrive as relived days — the Saturday traffic stop, the Monday death, the years of court dates and resets that keep grief from ever settling into something quiet.
Even now, RowVaughn Wells says time hasn’t brought relief so much as repetition: The same questions, the same anger, the same sense that the people with power can move on while the family can’t. And when public attention drifts, the pain doesn’t. It just becomes more private.
The civil case is where that pain is now being translated into a different kind of accounting. Wells’ wrongful-death lawsuit against the City of Memphis and others seeks $550 million. A judge has pushed the trial date back to Nov. 9, 2026, after earlier scheduling changes and court-ordered mediation efforts.
In practical terms, that means the city’s most visible reckoning over Nichols’ death is still in front of it — and so is the family’s long wait for a form of justice that isn’t simply symbolic.
