Tennessee governor indicators invoice blocking police reform regulation impressed by Tyre Nichols’ killing

                  Gerald Herbert/AP


                  Sierra Rogers, who known as Tyre Nichols her greatest good friend, adjusts objects in a memorial for the 29-year-old who was crushed by Memphis officers and later died.







          CNN
             — 




      Tennessee Republican Gov. Invoice Lee has signed a invoice into regulation that blocks cities from enacting some native police reforms, together with a lauded Memphis site visitors cease ordinance created after the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols.



      The Republican-controlled Tennessee legislature beforehand handed the invoice, which bans any metropolis from enacting any measure “that prohibits or limits the ability of a law enforcement agency to take all necessary steps that are lawful under state and federal law to fulfill the law enforcement agency’s duties to prevent and detect crime and apprehend criminal offenders.”



      The invoice was launched within the Tennessee Home a few 12 months after Nichols’ January 2023 demise. Though the regulation doesn’t particularly point out the Memphis site visitors cease measure, it has been broadly interpreted as a rebuke of the ordinance and would forestall cities throughout the state from implementing related reforms.






      The measure in Memphis, dubbed the “Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols,” prohibited police stops for minor infractions. The 2023 ordinance was handed by the Memphis Metropolis Council within the months after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was severely crushed by Memphis police throughout a site visitors cease. He was hospitalized and died a number of days later from his accidents, which included tearing and rupturing in his mind and bruising and cuts throughout his physique.



      The reform was supported by Nichols’ household in addition to civil rights teams and activists, who've argued police stops for minor infractions – additionally known as pretextual stops – unfairly goal Black drivers and expose them to police violence.



      Pretextual stops enable police to make use of minor site visitors infractions or damaged taillights as grounds to analyze motorists for extra severe crimes. Police have defended these sorts of stops, saying they're essential for combating possession of unlawful medication, weapons possession, human trafficking and drunken driving.



      Police initially mentioned they stopped Nichols for reckless driving. However Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis later mentioned digicam footage confirmed no proof of possible trigger for the site visitors cease.



      CNN has reached out to Lee’s workplace for remark.



      A lot of the dialogue across the laws has revolved across the site visitors cease that led to Nichols’ brutal beating – and in the end his demise.



      Earlier this month, Nichols’ mother and father pleaded with legislators to kill the invoice, in line with CNN affiliate WMC.



      “The city of Memphis worked tirelessly to get ordinances passed in Tyre’s name, so this bill hurts us deeply,” Nichols’ mother and father RowVaughn and Rodney Wells mentioned in an announcement printed by WMC. “Local Memphis leaders tried to speak with the state legislators pushing for this legislation, but they were brushed off –– as were we.”






      State Sen. Brent Taylor, a Republican and a sponsor of the invoice, described pretextual site visitors stops as “an important law enforcement tool,” in line with WMC.



      “We have to have uniformity and consistency across the state when it comes to traffic enforcement,” he mentioned.



      Police site visitors stops and their relationship to racial profiling and police violence have come below scrutiny throughout the nation. A January report discovered Black drivers in California had been stopped “more frequently than expected” by regulation enforcement, for example.



      Different states and cities have taken steps to get rid of pretextual stops, together with Virginia and Philadelphia, which turned the primary main metropolis to ban police from stopping drivers for low-level site visitors violations in 2021. It adopted within the footsteps of smaller cities like Minneapolis and Ramsey County, Minnesota.

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