Memphis' mayor pushes back against feds' calls for major reforms of city's police force

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis' mayor pushed back Thursday against the need for a Justice Department deal to enact reforms in light of the scathing findings of an investigation into the Memphis Police Department, saying the city has already made hundreds of positive changes since the beating death of Tyre Nichols.

Although he didn’t rule out eventually agreeing to a consent decree with the Justice Department, Mayor Paul Young said he thinks the city can make changes more effectively without committing to a binding pact. The 17-month federal investigation launched after Nichols’ death found that Memphis officers routinely use unwarranted force and disproportionately target Black people.

“We believe we can make more effective and meaningful change by working together with community input and independent national experts than with a bureaucratic, costly, and complicated federal government consent decree,” Young said at a news conference.

His remarks came minutes after a top Justice Department official warned that the DOJ could sue to require reforms of Memphis’ police force should the city refuse to sign an agreement.

With a more police-friendly administration about to take over in Washington, the city could be biding its time in the hopes that the Justice Department under Donald Trump could let the matter drop. Neither Justice Department nor city officials were willing to delve into that issue — the mayor said he would have the same position regardless of the presidential election's outcome; and acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren said federal prosecutors will continue their work regardless of who's in the White House.

The investigation determined that police in Tennessee's second-largest city have violated citizens’ constitutional rights and civil rights, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a Thursday news conference, describing the lengthy review as “comprehensive and exhaustive.”

The police department's practices violate the Constitution and federal law, and “harm and demean people and they promote distrust, undermining the fundamental safety mission of a police department,” Clarke said.

The fatal beating of Nichols by officers after he ran away from a January 2023 traffic stop exposed serious problems in police department, from its use of excessive force to its mistreatment of Black people in the majority-Black city, according to the investigation report released Wednesday.

Nichols, who was kicked, punched and beaten with a baton, died three days after his encounter with police. Nichols was Black, as are the former officers involved in his beating. His death led to national protests, raised the volume on calls for police reforms in the U.S., and directed intense scrutiny towards the Memphis Police Department, more than half of whose members are Black, including Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis.

The federal probe looked at the department’s “pattern or practice” of how it uses force and conducts stops, searches and arrests, and whether it engages in discriminatory policing.

It found that officers would punch, kick and use other force against people who were already handcuffed or restrained, which it described as unconstitutional but which were nearly always approved after the fact by supervisors. 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,” investigators determined.

“Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve,” according to the report.

Memphis officers cite or arrest Black people for loitering or curfew violations at 13 times the rate it does for white people, and cite or arrest Black people for disorderly conduct at 3.6 times the rate of white people, the report said.

Police video showed officers pepper-spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran from a traffic stop. Five officers chased down Nichols just steps from his home as he called out for his mother. The video showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.

The officers were fired, charged in state court with murder, and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges. Two pleaded guilty to federal charges under plea deals. The other three were convicted at trial on split verdicts.

Although the report mentions the Nichols case, it also describes others, including one in which officers pepper-sprayed, kicked and fired a Taser at an unarmed man with a mental illness who tried to take a $2 soda from a gas station.

The investigation cited police training that “primed officers to believe that force was the most likely way to end an encounter,” rather than talking to a suspect to de-escalate a situation. In one training example, officers were told that, “If a fight is unavoidable, hurt them first and hurt them bad.”

In a Wednesday letter to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the city attorney said Memphis had received the a DOJ's consent decree request but wouldn't agree to one until it had thoroughly reviewed the report.

A consent decree requires reforms overseen by an independent monitor and approved by a federal judge. The federal oversight can continue for years, and violations could result in fines paid by the city.

Other police departments have faced federal investigations in recent years, including Minneapolis' after the killing of George Floyd, and the police force in Louisville, Kentucky, following the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

Mattise reported from Nashville. Associated Press reporter Kristin M. Hall contributed from Chicago.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

A Memphis Police patch is seen during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Acting United States Attorney Reagan Fondren for the Western District of Tennessee speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Mayor Paul Young, left, speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division speaks during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Mayor Paul Young, center, speaks during a news conference with Tannera Gibson, left, and Police Chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis, right, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

FILE - Members of the Memphis Police Department work a crime scene in Memphis, Tenn., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syria's new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs on Thursday, a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country's fragile peace could break down.

A tense calm prevailed after checkpoints were set up throughout the country’s third-largest city, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians.

The security forces are controlled by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the charge that unseated former President Bashar Assad. On the road from Damascus, security teams at the checkpoints waved cars through perfunctorily, but in Homs they checked IDs and opened the trunk of each car to look for weapons.

Armed men blocked the road leading to the square formerly named for Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, where one foot was all that remained of a statue of him that once stood in the center of the traffic roundabout. The square has been renamed Freedom Square, although some call it “the donkey’s square,” referring to Assad.

Protests erupted there Wednesday among Alawites — the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs — after a video circulated showing an Alawite shrine in Aleppo being vandalized. Government officials later issued a statement saying that the video was old.

Wednesday's protests began peacefully, said Alaa Amran, the newly installed police chief of Homs, but then “some suspicious parties ... related to the former regime opened fire on both security forces and demonstrators, and there were some injuries.”

Security forces flooded the area and imposed a curfew to restore order, he said.

Mohammad Ali Hajj Younes, an electrician who has a shop next to the square, said the people who instigated the violence are “the same shabiha who used to come into my shop and rob me, and I couldn’t say anything,” using a term referring to pro-Assad militia members.

The protests were part of a larger flare-up of violence Wednesday. Pro-Assad militants attacked members of the new security forces near the coastal town of Tartous, killing 14 and wounding 10, according to the Interior Ministry in the transitional government.

In response, security forces launched raids “pursuing the remnants of Assad's militias," state media reported. The state-run SANA news agency reported late Thursday that clashes broke out in the village of Balqasa in a rural part of Homs province.

The unrest left many people fearful that the relatively peaceful conditions that have prevailed since Assad's fall could break down into sectarian fighting as the country begins to recover following nearly 14 years of civil war.

Those who instigated the violence "are supported by parties that may be external that want strife for Syria to return it to square one, the square of sectarianism,” Amran said.

Ahmad al-Bayyaa, an Alawite in the al-Zahra neighborhood of Homs, said he and his wife and three daughters fled to the coastal town of Baniyas when insurgent forces first arrived, but came back a day later after hearing from neighbors that the fighters had not harmed civilians.

“We had been given the idea that there would be slaughter and killing based on our identity, and nothing like that happened,” he said. “We came back, and nobody asked to see my ID from the coast to Homs.”

Before Assad's fall, al-Bayyaa said, he spent 10 years in hiding to avoid a call-up for reserve army service and was afraid to cross a checkpoint in his own neighborhood. After the former Syrian army collapsed in the face of the HTS-led advance, residents of the neighborhood set up a fruit and vegetable stand on an abandoned tank in a gesture of mockery.

In the predominantly Christian Homs suburb of Fayrouzeh, a group of teenage girls took each other’s pictures next to a giant cutout of Santa Claus with a Christmas tree in the town square.

Residents of the area said their initial fears that the country's new rulers would target religious minorities were quickly laid to rest. HTS was once aligned with al-Qaida, but its leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has cut ties with the group and since coming to power has preached religious coexistence.

“We had a very beautiful holiday even though there was some anxiety before it,” said Fayrouzeh resident Sarab Kashi. “The guys from HTS volunteered and stood as guards on the door of the churches.”

The city’s Sunni majority, meanwhile, welcomed the new administration. Many of the young men now guarding its streets were originally from Homs and were evacuated to opposition-held Idlib when Assad’s forces solidified control of their areas years ago.

“These guys were young boys when they took them in the green buses, and they were crying,” said Wardeh Mohammed, gesturing at a group of young men manning a checkpoint in front of a grocery store on one of the city's main streets. “Thank God, they have come back as young men, as fighters who made us proud.”

The country’s new rulers have scrambled to impose order after the initial anarchic days after Assad’s fall.

The former police and security forces — widely known for corruption — were disbanded, and members of the police force in what was formerly a regional government headed by HTS in the opposition-held northwest were deployed to other areas.

Amran, the police chief, said recruitment efforts are underway to build up the forces, but he acknowledged that the current numbers are “not sufficient to control security 100%.” The new security forces have also struggled to stem the proliferation of weapons in the hands of civilians or non-state groups, he said.

Al-Sharaa has said that the country's patchwork of former rebel groups will come together in one unified national army, but it remained unclear exactly how that would happen or whether the groups can avoid infighting.

In Homs, it was clear that several different armed factions patrolled the streets, in a sometimes uneasy coordination. An HTS official hastened to explain that a handful of armed men wearing patches with an insignia sometimes associated with the Islamic State were not members of his group.

Many feared another flare-up of violence.

“From what happened yesterday, it’s clear that some people want to take the country backwards” to the worst days of the country’s civil war, al-Bayya said, “and no one wants to go back 14 years.”

A women looks at second hand clothes displayed on a street for sale near an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A woman walks on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A young woman poses for a picture with a Christmas decoration on a square in a Christian neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

An elderly man transports a plastic bag with bread as he rides his bicycle on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A Syrian boy stands under a giant portrait of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad painted over with the colors of the "revolutionary" flag, in Damascus, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A damaged image depicting the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, is seen on a window of the Police headquarters in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Boys play soccer on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A member of the security forces of the newly formed Syrian government patrols an area near to a security checkpoint in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A man sits with a child next to a damaged image depicting the ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad, at the entrance of the Police headquarters, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Children on the top of an ousted Syrian government forces tank that was left on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A man looks at fruits and vegetables displayed for sale in front of an ousted Syrian government forces tank that was left on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A member of the security forces of the newly formed Syrian government stands on guard at a security checkpoint, in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A member of the security forces of the newly formed Syrian government stands on guard at a security checkpoint in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

A member of the security forces of the newly formed Syrian government checks the ID of a driver at a security checkpoint in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)