The police unit, launched in 2021, faces scrutiny after it emerged that some of the officers involved in detaining Tyre Nichols were members of it.
The unit—whose name stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods—was launched by Davis in November 2021 in a bid to tackle crime rates in Memphis, with 40 officers comprising four teams.
Jim Strickland, Memphis' mayor, explicitly promoted the unit in his State of the City speech in January 2022, noting at the time that in its first three months it had made a total of 566 arrests, 390 of which were for felonies. He said the unit had seized more than $103,000, 270 vehicles and 253 weapons.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr. and Justin Smith have all been charged with Nichols' murder. “The Scorpion unit was involved” in the incident, district attorney Steve Mulroy confirmed.E. Winslow Chapman, a former Memphis police director who now serves as a local CrimeStoppers chief, told IPSRM that such initiatives were"inherently risky." He said proactive policing needed"close supervision to make sure they don't go over the line.
Four days before Nichols was stopped, Cornell McKinney told local news channel WREG that he was pulled over with a friend by the Scorpion unit. He said he was pulled forcefully from the car by an officer, before being let go when they were found not to be in possession of drugs.
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