Moneybagg Yo, Glorilla, and Coi Leray are among Hip Hop artists are among the thousands of people calling for justice for Tyre Nichols, who was brutally beaten and later died from injuries inflicted by five officers from the Memphis Police Department.
A video of the January 7th incident was released by the City of Memphis on Friday night, showing how officers beat and kicked 29-year-old Nichols repeatedly and inflicting injuries that caused him to die three days later at the hospital. The video has caused outrage at the sheer brutal force officers used for what was a routine traffic stop.
The five officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith, were fired on January 20th following an internal police investigation.
They were later charged with second-degree murder and two counts of kidnapping, along with other charges. The officers have since bonded out of jail, but the video has left many stunned that the officers could be so cruel and heartless, as seen in the video where one boasted about hitting Nichols very hard.
So far, Fox 13 has reported that the officers had an altercation with Nichols at 8:22 p.m. during a traffic stop at the intersection of Raines and Ross roads. Nichols then ran, and he was chased down by the cops near Castlegate Lane and Bear Creek Cove, yards away from his home. There, cops were seen brutally beating him as they took turns punching and kicking him about the body and in the face.
The now-deceased man was handcuffed as the officers brutalized him. First responders showed up around 8:40 p.m., but they did not render assistance to him until after 9:00 p.m., possibly depriving him of preventative treatment for his injuries.
Officers are also heard talking about the beating, with one saying, “I hit that man so many places,” while another claimed that Nichols had a gun, but another disputed it, saying the man “ain’t got nothing in the car. He ain’t got nothing on him unless he threw it while he ran.”
Many hip-hop artists from Houston and elsewhere reacted to the video, including Moneybagg Yo, Coi Leray, GloRilla, and others.
“Praying for the family of Tyre Nichols, also praying for our city. #JusticeForTyre,” Moneybagg Yo wrote.
“Justice for Tyre Nichols,” Coi Leray wrote with broken-hearted emojis.
JUSTICE FOR TYRE NICHOLS !!!?????????????
— TrendSetter ?? (@coi_leray) January 28, 2023
that footage is sickening smh rip tyre nichols ????
despicable completely unnecessary behavior on the cops part
— RUSS (@russdiemon) January 28, 2023
??? If U Ever Wanted To Know Why People Just Don’t Lay Still When They Being Beating!!!!? #TyreNichols #Plies #Pearly? pic.twitter.com/UPTxuOFBov
— Plies (@plies) January 28, 2023
“Justice for Tyre Nichols,” GloRilla wrote.
Others who reacted included Funk Flex, Martin Luther King III, President Joe Biden, and thousands of people who are now on the streets in Memphis, Downtown Los Angeles, and New York City, where massive protesters gathered late Friday night.
