MEMPHIS — Memphis Police Department Lt. Larnce Wright said Thursday that , a Black man who was killed by a police officer in Oakland, California, in 2009, called it “a disingenuous argument.”
“When it came to trial, all of those officers said, ‘This is the way we are trained. This is a common defense theme that officers use.’ Oscar Grant was one,” Pointer said. “In every one of those cases, they’ll have an expert come and say that. For all of these cases, you can see the flip side of the coin.” (Johannes Mehserle, a former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after fatally shooting Grant.)
The argument also speaks to a power dynamic between police and the people they are supposed to serve.
“They claim to follow some parts of training but ignore others,” Pointer said. “You are supposed to adjust the amount of force you are using based on the level of resistance. If someone is defenseless or passively resisting, that does not allow you to escalate the use of force all the way to deadly force.”
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Anne Bremner, who represented a Tacoma, Washington, police officer in the case of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who was killed by police in March 2020, said it was unusual for officers to testify against each other. But it is becoming more common, especially in cases like Nichols’ — where, as Bremner said, deadly use of force “clearly wasn’t warranted.”
“I think the blue line has changed,” she said. “There is a change in charging officers and there is change in officers testifying.”
“If what the [Nichols] prosecution claims is true, this is terrible, reprehensible conduct.”
