From [HERE] The Memphis Police Department routinely and pervasively deprives Black people of their Constitutional rights and follows policies that grossly discriminate against black people in its highly segregated city, the US justice department has said.

The justice department began investigating the police force for the Tennessee city in 2023, after the death of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally tortured and murdered by police during a traffic stop.

In its report from the investigation, released on Wednesday, the department said Memphis police "must correct these issues" that it said were part of a "pattern" of civil rights violations.

The report states, “We have reasonable cause to believe that MPD and the City engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. First, MPD uses excessive force. Second, MPD makes unlawful stops, searches, and arrests. Third, MPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people when enforcing the law. Fourth, the City and MPD unlawfully discriminate when responding to people with behavioral health disabilities.”

Memphis has relied on traffic stops to address violent crime. The police department has encouraged officers in specialized units, task forces, and patrol to prioritize street enforcement. Officers and community members have described this approach as “saturation,” or flooding neighborhoods with traffic stops…

Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve. Our investigation found that officers use force to punish and retaliate against people who do not immediately do as they say. They rapidly escalate encounters, including traffic stops, and use excessive force even when people are already handcuffed or restrained. They resort to intimidation and threats. They have put themselves and others in harm’s way—officers have unlawfully fired at moving cars and accidentally pepper sprayed and fired Tasers at each other. ..

The report explains that “police officers [are] stopping and detaining large numbers of drivers for minor infractions without legal justification. In a city of about 630,000 people, MPD officers reported making 866,164 traffic stops between January 2018 and August 2023. The number of stops may be even greater. They cited or arrested drivers in at least 296,685 cases, predominantly for minor infractions. ..

Memphis is a majority-Black city, but Black people in Memphis disproportionately experience these violations. MPD has never assessed its practices for evidence of discrimination. We found that officers treat Black people more harshly than white people who engage in similar conduct… 

Memphis is a racially segregated city. Both north and south Memphis are predominantly Black, while a string of majority-white neighborhoods leads from downtown towards east Memphis and wealthier suburbs…

Below are a few excerpts from the report

A. The Memphis Police Department Uses Excessive Force in Violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Our review of a random sample of force incidents showed that MPD officers regularly escalate encounters involving nonviolent offenses and use unreasonable force against unarmed people who pose no threat. Officers punch, kick, and tackle people just moments into an encounter without justification. Officers use disproportionate force against people who have committed, at most, minor offenses such as traffic infractions, and use force even after people are restrained. Officers use force to retaliate and punish, especially when people talk back to them. MPD has used unreasonable deadly force, such as shooting at moving cars and using unjustified neck restraints. Officers also use excessive force against people with behavioral health disabilities. Officers face little accountability when they use excessive force, and commanders in the police department have ignored clear warning signs about its prevalence…

1. MPD Escalates Encounters Involving Low-Level and Traffic Offenses, Leading to Unreasonable Uses of Force. Memphis police officers regularly escalate situations and use severe, excessive force against people suspected of nonviolent offenses, including traffic violations or shoplifting. A significant share of the unreasonable force we found resulted from these types of encounters. Police officers are required to consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding whether and how to use force, including the severity of the alleged offense and if the person resisted the officer’s control. But MPD officers resort to force likely to cause pain or injury almost immediately in response to low-level, nonviolent offenses, even when people are not aggressive

2. MPD Uses Unjustified Neck Restraints. Neck restraints include chokeholds, strangleholds, or other maneuvers that apply pressure to a person’s neck or throat in a way that limits air or blood flow. These restraints can cause permanent brain injury, stroke, cognitive impairment, and death. Since 2019, Tennessee law has banned officers from using certain neck restraints unless deadly force is justified. For such tactics to be permissible under MPD policy, officers must believe there is an “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or a third person.” MPD policy makes no exception for “the use of hands, knees, feet, or one’s body weight to restrict a subject’s ability to breathe.” Despite these prohibitions, MPD officers regularly use unlawful restraints, sometimes repeatedly in a single incident.

In over 90 percent of the incidents we reviewed involving neck restraints, neither the officers nor supervisors reported the neck restraints. If mentioned in reports at all, officers described neck restraints simply as “physical force.” In one incident, the reviewing lieutenant colonel sent a use-of-force report to a front-line supervisor to “research” officers’ “omissions.” The supervisor instructed the officers to add that there had been “impact” to the face—the body-worn camera video shows they punched the person. But the supervisor failed to identify or mention the two obvious neck restraints that the video showed during the same incident and were also omitted from the officers’ reports. At the time of our review, no officer who used an unjustified neck restraint in the incidents from our sample had received discipline…

3. The Memphis Police Department Uses Unreasonable Force on People Who Are Restrained or Under Control. MPD officers punch, kick, and use other force against people who are already handcuffed or restrained. The gratuitous use of force against a person who has surrendered is unconstitutional. We found many incidents in which officers used unreasonable force against people who were restrained. In nearly all of them, supervisors approved the use of force. One officer hit a handcuffed man in the face and torso with a baton eight times. In a different incident, officers kicked a woman in the chest three times while she was handcuffed in the back of a squad car. In another case, officers punched a man in the throat while he was handcuffed to a chair. Officers repeatedly permitted police dogs to bite or continue to bite people, including children, who were nonresistant and attempting to surrender.

MPD’s Dangerous and Punitive Use of Police Dogs MPD’s Canine Unit trains dogs to bite suspects immediately after they locate them and to hold the bite until a handler directs them to release. In practice, this results in unnecessary and unreasonably long bites that hurt people who are not a threat. MPD officers have allowed c anines to bite people, including teenagers, who were trying to surrender. One MPD officer commanded his dog to bite a person who was sleeping. Another dog bit a 17-year-old’s arm for at least 30 seconds as he begged officers to release the dog; the teenager was later taken to a children’s hospital for treatment. These bites were unnecessary and unreasonable because the people posed no threat to the dogs or their handlers.

One training officer told us that officers often need to insert a device into a dog’s mouth to get the dog to release the bite, indicating that they do not reliably release on command. And even though MPD policy limits use of dogs to cases with felony suspects, we reviewed an incident in which an officer released his dog to apprehend a man suspected of shoplifting household items. The dog bit the man multiple times, causing injuries that required hospitalization. Supervisors found no policy violations.

4. MPD’s Use of Less-Lethal Weapons Violates the Law. Memphis police officers unreasonably use less-lethal weapons, such as Tasers and pepper spray, often without first attempting to resolve situations peacefully. Of the 2,669 reported less-lethal force incidents between January 2020 and September 2023, MPD officers used a Taser or pepper spray in at least 454 of them. Officers have used Tasers and pepper spray recklessly, and they have accidentally discharged these weapons at other officers, or even themselves.

5. MPD Officers Unreasonably Shoot at People and Cars After Placing Themselves in Dangerous Situations. We reviewed all 18 Memphis police shootings from 2018 through 2022. A significant number of them involved officers firing into cars or at moving vehicles, without justification. Shooting at a moving car is deadly force and therefore permissible only when an officer has probable cause to believe a suspect poses an immediate threat of serious physical harm to the officer or another person. It is also highly dangerous because it presents risks of an uncontrolled vehicle. MPD officers have fired at moving cars without justification. An officer may be justified to use deadly force against “a driver who objectively appears ready to drive into an officer or bystander with his car.” But that justification ends “once the car moves away, leaving the officer and bystanders in a position of safety.” 13 MPD officers have disregarded tactical basics and placed themselves in dangerous and avoidable situations when approaching cars. “Where a police officer unreasonably places himself in harm’s way, his use of deadly force may be deemed excessive.” 14

In one shooting, an officer fired at a car at least eight times at a fast-food drive-thru in the middle of the day, jeopardizing other officers and bystanders. The officers had been alerted to a stolen car, and two police cars approached from different directions, trying to box the car in. One officer got out of his car and ran towards the suspect’s car but tripped and fell to the ground as the suspect’s car moved slowly in his direction. As he regained his footing and jumped out of the car’s path, another officer fired twice at the car. The officer fired another six shots after his partner had retreated to safety, including the final two as the suspect’s car slowly came to rest against a brick wall. When he continued to fire after the car no longer presented a threat, the officer used unreasonable force and unnecessarily placed bystanders and officers in harm’s way. MPD’s investigation improperly found that this use of deadly force was justified.

6. MPD’s Deficient Policies and Training Contribute to Excessive Force. MPD’s deficient policies and training fail to advise officers on the constitutional requirements for using force. MPD’s use of force policies are missing critical elements, like the basic legal requirement that force must be proportionate in light of the severity of the offense and the threat that officers face. Instead, MPD policy suggests that force may be necessary if a person’s non-compliance prevents an officer from accomplishing their duties in a “timely manner.” The desire to resolve an interaction quickly does not justify the use of force. As described above, we reviewed multiple incidents in which MPD officers used force unnecessarily just because a person did not immediately follow their commands.

B. MPD Conducts Unlawful Stops, Searches, and Arrests. We have reasonable cause to believe MPD engages in a pattern or practice of making stops, searches, and arrests that violate the Fourth Amendment. During minor traffic and pedestrian stops, MPD officers conduct unjustified frisks and more intrusive searches, or handcuff and hold people in patrol vehicles just to write a simple citation. At times, officers unnecessarily prolong these stops, or search and seize the drivers’ vehicles. MPD officers also make unlawful arrests for low-level offenses, such as arresting people for disorderly conduct even as they are following officers’ instructions and commands.

Our findings are based on a variety of evidence. We interviewed MPD officers and supervisors and observed their activities during ride-alongs. We reviewed MPD policies and training materials concerning stops, searches, and arrests. We analyzed a random sample of traffic stops from 2021 through 2023, as well as a random sample of arrests for minor offenses, such as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, loitering, and curfew violations from 2022 through 2023. For each incident in our sample, we examined officers’ body-worn camera footage and all available documentation for evidence of constitutional violations. We also reviewed dozens of complaints and internal affairs investigations, use of force incidents, and court cases involving stops, searches, and arrests by MPD officers, including numerous cases in which federal courts suppressed evidence because of MPD’s unconstitutional conduct. And we interviewed judges, judicial commissioners, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, as well as community members who have been impacted by MPD’s practices.

1. MPD Makes Unconstitutional Stops. Under the Fourth Amendment, police can stop and briefly detain people if they have reasonable suspicion the person is engaged in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion must be “articulable,” not just an “unparticularized suspicion or hunch.” 15 MPD officers violate these standards while enforcing traffic laws and during other interactions with people they encounter on Memphis streets. The pattern of Fourth Amendment violations stems from MPD’s decision to prioritize traffic enforcement as a central method to address crime in Memphis, while at the same time failing to ensure that officers understand and follow constitutional requirements when they stop and detain people. MPD officers face pressure to make stops. Many of these traffic stops involve documentation or equipment violations, like broken taillights and expired tags. MPD’s data show that from 2018 to 2023, more than half of MPD’s citations involved documentation or equipment violations. The chart below shows MPD’s traffic citations in more detail. This data does not include hundreds of thousands of traffic stops that did not result in citations, because MPD officers do not document the reason for those stops.

Supervisors rarely review traffic stops to ensure they meet constitutional standards. But they do measure officers’ “productivity” based in part on how many stops and citations they generate. Supervisors look at officers’ totals at the end of each month to ensure that they are making enough stops. Officers can face discipline if they fail to meet productivity averages for their shifts, and supervisors have even cited officers’ productivity as grounds for leniency in disciplinary hearings. Reflecting the pressure to make stops as an overall enforcement strategy, one officer said to a colleague after a traffic stop, “You guys wanted to find something . . . Traffic stop. Traffic stop. Traffic stop. Check. Check. Check . . . You guys asked, I just delivered.” MPD stopped and cited one Black man 30 times in three years. At the same time, MPD’s failure to properly supervise its officers results in unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests.

2. MPD Searches People Unlawfully. Memphis police officers conduct unreasonable frisks or searches following pedestrian or traffic stops. The Fourth Amendment permits police to “frisk” or “pat down” people for weapons if there is reasonable articulable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous. The scope of a lawful frisk is limited to a person’s outer clothing, and once an officer determines a person is unarmed, there is no longer justification to continue to search. To conduct a more intrusive search of a person, officers must have probable cause to believe they will find evidence of a crime.

A stop or a frisk is far more than a “petty indignity”—it is, rather, “a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment.”18 But MPD officers order drivers out of their cars and frisk them for weapons without justification to believe they are armed and dangerous. Courts have recognized that nervousness is an “unreliable indicator” of dangerousness, “especially in the context of a traffic stop.” 19 This may be particularly true for individuals who, due to fear that police may treat them unfairly because of their race, may display symptoms of stress during encounters with the police. Still, MPD policy lists “[t]he appearance and demeanor of the suspect, i.e. person appears to be unusually scared, jittery, or acting in a strange manner” as a factor that may serve as the basis for a frisk. In our review of a random sample of traffic stops, officers often frisked individuals with no explanation at all.

MPD does not require officers to record when they frisk or search people, which means police leaders cannot assess how common the practices are. Even when officers do record their actions, they often do not cite specific facts that support their conduct. For example, in one incident in which an officer stopped a driver for improper tags, handcuffed the driver, searched the car, and searched the driver’s purse inside the vehicle, the officer’s report did not mention any of these activities. In another incident in which officers were responding to a call about a car at an abandoned home, the officers similarly failed to document that they had handcuffed, frisked, and searched the occupant of the car and searched the car. Supervisors therefore are not easily able to review and assess whether officers are engaging in unlawful conduct during these frisks and searches. This lack of documentation also prevents MPD leadership from assessing whether MPD’s search practices are legal and effective.

Officers also frisk and search people after stopping them on the street. After stopping a Black man for “walking into traffic,” officers immediately bent the man over the hood of their patrol car, patted him down, manipulated the outside of the man’s pocket, and reached inside. The officers noted in their report that the man was a “known panhandler,” but did not mention or seek to justify the frisk and search. They released him twenty minutes later with a citation. In another incident, when an officer stopped three Black teenage boys for a curfew violation in downtown Memphis, the officer frisked all the boys even though he had no reason to believe they were armed and dangerous. The boys, who were suspected of nothing more than a curfew violation, were compliant and had not tried to reach or conceal anything in their pockets before he began frisking them, and the officer’s report did not mention or justify the frisk. Body cavity searches implicate greater constitutional concerns than searches of a person’s clothing and generally require a warrant. MPD policy requires a warrant to conduct “an inspection, probing, or examination of the inside of a person’s anus, vagina, or genitals.” 20 But MPD officers ignore these requirements and conduct invasive searches in public view. In one incident, MPD officers seemed to believe a more intrusive search was warranted “to catch bigger fish.” During a “zero-tolerance” operation in a “high-crime and known-drug area,” officers saw two men who had been standing on a corner walk away when the patrol car approached. Finding these actions “suspicious,” the officers detained, handcuffed, frisked, and searched the men. During the search, one officer asked, “Did you check his ass crack yet?” and another officer responded, “Yes.” Both men complained that an officer searched their rectums. The officers were not disciplined for the searches.

3. MPD Unlawfully Searches and Seizes Cars. To search a car, officers must have probable cause to believe they will find evidence of a crime. Police can also search vehicles when they make an arrest, when there is reason to believe a person is armed and dangerous, when evidence is in “plain view” of the officers, and if they take lawful possession of the car. Although officers may ask a person to waive these requirements and consent to a search, the consent must be voluntary and not the product of police coercion. During traffic stops for minor violations, MPD officers violate people’s rights by illegally searching their vehicles. For example, officers stopped a man for driving without tags on his car, told him to get out of his car, then, without explanation or warning, frisked the man and held him in the backseat of a locked patrol vehicle. Officers then searched the man’s car, including opening the glove compartment and looking under the seat. Finding nothing, the officer issued the man a citation and released him more than 30 minutes later. The officer’s report did not mention the search.

4. MPD Makes Unlawful Arrests. Under the Fourth Amendment, arrests must be supported by probable cause, which requires “a probability or substantial chance of criminal activity.” 22 Each year, MPD makes thousands of arrests for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, such as trespassing, disorderly conduct, panhandling, curfew violations, drug possession, drug paraphernalia possession, public intoxication, and vandalism. Unlike arrests for more serious, violent crimes, officers have significant discretion on how to handle such low-level violations, such as whether to make an arrest, issue a citation, or let people off with a warning. MPD officers abuse that discretion and arrest people for minor offenses without probable cause, at times in apparent retaliation or to justify the officer’s own conduct. Adults who are arrested are transported to jail where County magistrates review their charges, while children who are arrested for low-level offenses often receive a summons to appear in juvenile court.

MPD’s intrusive and unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests violate the rights of people throughout Memphis. The impact of being unlawfully stopped, frisked, detained, handcuffed, searched, or arrested is hard to quantify. The damage to one’s dignity, reputation, and self-image can be lasting and traumatic. One man told us, “Getting pulled over in our community is a frightening experience.” He said officers “spark fear in order to control.” A man who experienced a cavity search said that he now spends more time in his house, “can’t eat,” and gets jumpy whenever he sees a police car. One woman told us that her family’s experiences meant she would only call MPD in a life-threatening situation: “They are not the first resort. They are the last resort.” Many of these improper stops result in nothing more than traffic citations or other charges that are ultimately dropped. Some people are taken into custody and may sit in jail away from their families and jobs for charges that, as a result of MPD’s unlawful conduct, are likely to be dismissed. These interactions can be degrading and humiliating and result in other negative impacts, such as loss of employment or transportation or separation from families. Although their actions have serious consequences, one judicial commissioner said, “[MPD officers] don’t get sometimes this is not a game.”

C. MPD Unlawfully Discriminates Against Black People in its Enforcement. We have reasonable cause to believe that MPD engages in racial discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Safe Streets Act. These laws prohibit police practices that discriminate on the basis of race. 25 We examined MPD’s enforcement of low-level, minor offenses, where officers have more discretion over whether to stop, cite, and arrest people. MPD’s own data show that across a range of different law enforcement actions, MPD treats Black people more harshly than white people when they engage in similar conduct. These disparities are driven by MPD’s saturation-style enforcement of low-level offenses, including traffic violations, with limited supervision and safeguards. MPD’s stops and citations impose a heavy burden on Memphians, especially on those who have been stopped repeatedly. But MPD has never meaningfully assessed whether these practices are effective or necessary to address violent crime, or whether they result in discriminatory treatment. 26

1.MPD Engages in Racially Disparate Enforcement.We examined records from MPD’s 911 system and data recording stops and arrests to determine whether MPD officers treat similarly-situated people differently, without a reasonable basis to do so. We based our analyses on officers’ own descriptions of people’s conduct. We then measured officers’ actions against reliable benchmarks to understand how officers treat people of different races who engage in the same conduct. These analyses allow us to rule out alternative explanations for racial disparities and assess the role of race in how MPD enforces the law. We found that MPD treats Black people more harshly than white people who engage in similar conduct.

MPD enforces traffic laws more aggressively against Black drivers and in Black neighborhoods. Each year, MPD officers cite thousands of drivers for moving violations, such as speeding or running a red light. But officers treat people engaged in similar driving behavior differently, due, in part, to race. We designed this analysis to find similarly-situated drivers—those engaged in dangerous driving behavior at similar locations and times of day. We first identified a pool of drivers engaged in dangerous driving behavior that led to crashes. 27 We then compared this dataset to citations MPD officers issued to drivers for moving violations along the same stretch of road at around the same time of day. If MPD enforced traffic laws without regard to race, we would expect officers to treat drivers whose dangerous driving led to crashes similarly to drivers whose dangerous driving led to traffic stops. Instead, we found that MPD is 21 percent more likely to cite Black drivers for moving violations, as compared to white drivers who engaged in dangerous driving that led to at-fault crashes in the same place and time.

MPD is more likely to cite or arrest Black people for drug-related offenses than white people. MPD officers are more likely to arrest or cite Black people for drug offenses than white people who they describe as engaging in similar conduct. We analyzed MPD’s data regarding incidents in which officers encountered people using drugs, and then compared how officers treated people of different races in those encounters. We identified these “similarly situated” people based on officers’ own reports. We designed this analysis to rule out factors other than race: the analysis only compared people who were accused by officers of engaging in similar types of conduct, as described by the officers themselves. If race did not factor into officers’ decision making, then we would expect the outcomes of those encounters to be closely the same. Instead, we found that officers are 17 percent more likely to cite or arrest Black people for drug-related offenses, as compared to white people who were described by officers as engaging in the same conduct.

MPD arrests Black people for marijuana possession at more than 5 times the rate of white people. We also found significant disparities in MPD’s enforcement of laws prohibiting the possession of marijuana. Data on drug arrests can be compared to relevant benchmarks on drug use to evaluate whether MPD enforces drug laws disproportionately. Public health data show that Black people and white people use marijuana at similar rates. If MPD enforced marijuana possession laws without regard to race, we would expect that Black people and white people in Memphis would be charged with marijuana possession violations at roughly equal rates. But that is not what the data shows. Instead, we found that MPD cites or arrests Black adults for marijuana possession at 5.2 times the rate of white adults, based on MPD’s data from 2018 to 2023. Disparate drug enforcement is not new in Memphis. A 2016 report found that MPD arrested Black people at more than 3.5 times the rate of others, when adjusted for the city’s racial demographics. The disparity was larger for marijuana possession: MPD arrested Black people for marijuana possession at more than 4 times the rate of others.

MPD disproportionately cites Black drivers for minor traffic offenses. MPD’s traffic stops often involve equipment or documentation violations, rather than dangerous driving behavior. MPD disproportionately cites Black drivers for minor traffic offenses such as improper tags, tinted windows, faulty taillights, and other equipment violations, as compared to their share of the residential population. Overall, MPD cites Black drivers for equipment violations at 4.5 times the rate of white drivers, based on their share of the residential population. Black drivers receive citations for improperly tinted windows at 9.8 times the rate of white drivers, and for defective lights at 6.1 times the rate of white drivers. Nearly 90 percent of MPD’s equipment violation citations were of Black drivers.

MPD disproportionately cites or arrests Black people for highly discretionary misdemeanor offenses. These stark disparities extend to other discretionary misdemeanor offenses. For example, MPD cites or arrests Black people for loitering or curfew violations at 13 times the rate of white people. And MPD cites or arrests Black people for disorderly conduct at 3.6 times the rate of white people.

MPD’s enforcement of low-level, discretionary offenses also impacts Black youth in Memphis. Data confirm that officers disproportionately arrest Black youth for a variety of highly discretionary offenses. From January 2018 through August 2023, MPD arrested 180 Black children for loitering or curfew violations, as compared to just 4 white children. MPD arrested 120 Black children for disorderly conduct, as compared to just 1 white child.

D. The City and MPD Unlawfully Discriminate in Their Response to People with Behavioral Health Disabilities. The City of Memphis and MPD violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by discriminating against people with behavioral health disabilities 30 when providing emergency response services. 31 Each year, MPD officers respond to tens of thousands of 911 calls involving behavioral health. Some of these calls are from people with behavioral health disabilities, calling because they are experiencing a crisis. Other calls are from family members or bystanders who call when they see someone who may need behavioral health support. The City’s own 911 call-takers code the majority of these calls as “nonviolent.” But the City requires MPD officers to respond to all of these calls, which leads to unnecessary police interactions. In a significant number of these incidents, MPD officers—including specially trained Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) officers—use unnecessary force or mock and belittle people with behavioral health disabilities. [MORE]