A long beating at night, with punches, kicks, truncheons... The video of the arrest of Tire Nichols was made public on Friday evening, January 27, by the authorities.

This African-American, beaten by the police after his arrest in Memphis, Tennessee, died in early January.

Five police officers have since been charged.

The images show the violence inflicted for long moments by the five black police officers, in the wake of a banal road check on January 7.

Tire Nichols, sprayed with tear gas and targeted by a Taser gun with electric shocks, tries to flee but is then caught by the agents, who are unleashed, apparently insensitive to the pleas of the motorist.

Reacting some thirty minutes after the explosive video was made public, President Joe Biden said he was "outraged" and "deeply bruised".

"Mom. Mom. Mom!" Tyre Nichols shouts in one of the excerpts.

In another, we see him on the ground, beaten for long seconds.

"They reduced him to a pulp"

On Friday, early protests took place in various cities across the country, including Washington and Memphis.

In New York, more than 200 people marched chanting "No justice, no peace".

In a sign that the case is potentially explosive, Joe Biden urged that rallies be "peaceful" and spoke on the phone Friday afternoon with Tyre Nichols' mother and stepfather.

Because his death recalls that of the African-American George Floyd, killed by a police officer in May 2020. Demonstrations against racism and police violence had then set the country ablaze, federated around the slogan "Black Lives Matter".

"When my husband and I arrived at the hospital and I saw my son, he was already dead. They had reduced him to a pulp. He had bruises everywhere, his head was swollen like a watermelon," said told in tears RowVaughn Wells, the mother of Tire Nichols, in an interview broadcast by CNN.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis has warned that the video showing the man's arrest for a simple traffic violation was "comparable, if not worse" to that showing the violent police arrest of Rodney King , in 1991. The acquittal, a year later, of the four police officers involved, triggered unprecedented riots in Los Angeles.

Demonstrations in several American cities

The authorities have been calling for calm for several days, anticipating demonstrations after the publication of a video deemed "appalling" by those who saw it.

Tire Nichols' family have themselves called for peaceful gatherings.

"Please demonstrate, but demonstrate safely," her stepfather, Rodney Wells, said.

In Memphis, protesters marched as the video was released, chanting, "Say his name. Tire Nichols."

"You didn't want to listen to us", proclaimed the procession in this city where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.

Elsewhere in the country, the police were preparing for possible overflows.

Two Joe Biden advisers have spoken to the mayors of 16 US cities about the protests.

"Against all police violence"

Tire Nichols, hospitalized, died three days after his arrest.

The five African-American police officers, since dismissed, were charged with murder and imprisoned.

Four of them were later released on bail.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was "horrified," and Attorney General Merrick Garland said a federal investigation had been opened.

The leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, denounced him as an "unacceptable" murder, while left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders called for "everything to be done to end police violence against people of color".

While expressing their horror, the family's lawyers as well as the parents of the young man wanted to salute the "speed" of the measures taken against the police.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, a famous civil rights figure who will deliver the funeral oration for Tire Nichols, said the fact that the police were black made "the event even more shocking".

"We are against all police brutality, not just police brutality by white people," he said.

With AFP

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