Demands to 'demolish and rebuild' police as city mourns

As Nyliayh Stewart marched along Interstate 55 alongside protesters last Friday night, the moment of sorrow and anger felt familiar.

- Edwin Rios MEMPHIS

Nearly a decade ago, in 2015, Stewart had been a teenager in Mississippi when she received word in the middle of the night that her cousin Darrius had been killed by a white Memphis police officer during a traffic stop while he was running away, according to witnesses at the time.

They had grown up like siblings. Stewart, now 24, heard the chants calling for justice for Tyre Nichols,

the latest Black man killed by police in America, and felt the anger and anguish for his family. Unlike the five Black Memphis officers charged with Nichols’s killing, the cop who shot and killed Darrius, who retired from Memphis police, was never indicted.

“This should not have happened,” said Stewart. “This family should not have to bury him. My family should not have had to bury my cousin.”

Months after Stewart’s killing, amid the national outcry over police violence, Memphis police received body cameras. And now, as the city reels yet again, following the death of a 29-year-old FedEx worker and skater, Tyre Nichols, at the hands of police, calls for further police reform have erupted again.

Last Friday night, hours after city officials released video footage described by the police chief, Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, as “heinous, reckless and inhumane”, Memphis residents descended on the highway bridge dividing West Memphis, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee, cutting off traffic for hours. In this historically Black city, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated at a motel in 1968 when he was in town supporting striking sanitation workers.