January 29, 2023

Tyre Nichols’ Family Attorney Calls on Congress to Pass George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

“Shame on us if we don’t use his tragic death to finally get” the bill passed.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks at a news conference with RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, and his stepfather Rodney Wells, in Memphis, Tennessee, on Friday.Gerald Herbert/AP

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On Sunday, Ben Crump, an attorney representing the family of Tyre Nichols, called on Congress to pass police reform legislation in the wake of Nichols’ death at the hands of Memphis police earlier this month. 

“Shame on us if we don’t use his tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Crump said on CNN. The legislation, which has passed twice in the House, would limit qualified immunity for police officers, restrict the types of force police can use, and make it easier for the Justice Department to investigate police misconduct.

The five officers who brutally beat Nichols have been fired and are facing murder charges. The unit they worked for has also been disbanded.

Crump said that he and the Nichols family had made their support for the bill clear in a call with President Joe Biden. The path for the bill to become law has gotten harder now that Republicans control the House of Representatives. 

The bill would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants in federal drug cases, as well as create a national registry of police misconduct and force police departments to collect more data, NPR reported. The bill would also push more money toward community-based policing. It would mostly affect federal law enforcement.

Crump argued that there hasn’t been federal police form legislation since Lyndon Johnson was president. “It didn’t happen with Rodney King, it didn’t happen with Michael Brown in Ferguson and it didn’t happen with George Floyd,” he continued. “How many of these tragedies do we have to see on video before we say we have a problem, America?”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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