North Texas law enforcement officers respond to death of Tyre Nichols
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – As hard as it was for all of us to watch the videos, it was even harder for some law enforcement veterans who say they were disgusted by what they saw.
Law enforcement experts broke it down into three obvious failures.
There is a complete disregard of training, lack of any supervision, and no attempt to control their emotions.
"This never should've happened," said former Rockwall Police Chief Max Geron. "This is terrible, words don't encapsulate. it's one of the worst things I've seen on behalf of police officers in my career."
Those are strong words about the Memphis police videos coming from Geron who spent 28 years as a Dallas police officer before becoming police chief in Rockwall and recently retiring.
"I'm angry for the good men and women of this profession," he said.
Angry that the officers who beat Nichols seemed to be fueled by rage.
"Every turn that they were just exactly some sort of revenge for a perceived disregard of their authority," Geron said. "It seem to me that there's a culture that's pervasive at least amongst the officers in that unit that were there that night, this was normal to them or acceptable."
"This looks like an adrenaline response," said UTD Criminologist Timothy Bray. "It's very clear this is almost a rage response that's fueled by fear."
Bray says the Memphis officers violated standard procedures that apply to every law enforcement officer.
"They are holding him in place while they're beating him, there is no procedure that says a suspect who is restrained, needs to be struck by a 3rd or 4th officer," Bray said.
CBS 11 spoke to some other officers, who also said they were appalled by the video.
A lot of times in less clear cut brutality cases we find officers who side with their brothers and sisters in blue, but we're not finding that in this case.