Tyre Nichols - updates: 20 hours of video missing as pressure grows on Biden over police reform

Up to 20 hours of additional footage from the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols by a group of Memphis Police Department officers has yet to be released, according to a law enforcement official in Tennessee.

Unreleased footage from the attack on 7 January includes audio of what was said among emergency responders and officers in the aftermath of the beating and after Nichols was moved to a local hospital, Shelby County prosecutor Steven Mulroy told CNN.

Nichols died in hospital on 10 January, three days after the attack.

It will be up to Memphis officials to determine whether to publicly release any additional footage, following the release of roughly one hour of footage from four separate videos on 27 January.

Like police scandals that have come before it, officer bodycam video is a central part of illuminating what happened to Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who was severly beaten by Memphis police officers earlier this month before dying in hospital.

Memphis police have released footage of the brutal arrest, which shows a gang of officers punching, tasing, and kicking the 29-year-old until he’s barely conscious.

Here’s our report on what the footage reveals.

Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Congress attended his funeral on 1 February, where the Rev Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy. Members of Nichols’ family are slated to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as guests of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Body-worn camera footage shows officers dragging Nichols from his car and firing a taser weapon at him before he fled the scene on foot.

Here’s what we know about why he was stopped.

Reasons for the traffic stop that led to the violent arrest and death of the 29-year-old Black man have been inconsistent

At the bipartisan National Prayer Breakfast event in Washington DC on Thursday morning, President Joe Biden condemned the “violence in our communities,” pointing to recent mass shootings in California and the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

“Justice is long overdue,” he said. In his remarks, the president said that “in our politics and our lives, we too often see each other as opponents and not competitors.”

“We see each other as enemies, not neighbors. And as tough as these times have been, if we look closer, we see the strength, the determination that has long defined America,” he added.

The president, invoking his “soul of the nation” theme that he has threaded throughout his campaign and administration, said that his prayer for the event that the nation begins “to see each other again, look at each other again, travel with each other again, argue like hell with each other again but then still go to lunch together.”

“We have to start treating each other in ways different than we have, in my humble opinion,” he said.

A program for his funeral – a Celebration of Life for Tyre Nichols – said that he “loved skateboarding, watching the sunset, photography and most of all helping people”.

“He had the most infectious smile,” it said.

It prominently features a quote that was on his photography website: “My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing through my eye and out through my lens.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump issued a plea for justice for Nichols as both a son to grieving parents and father to a 4-year-old boy. “But most of all, the human being”, he said.

Video footage of police officers beating Nichols did not include “one ounce of humanity”, Mr Crump said.

“Why can’t they see the humanity in Tyre?” he asked.

More from the funeral service on Wednesday:

Civil rights leaders, Kamala Harris and family members plea for his memory to ‘shine a light on the path toward peace and justice’

Four of the five former Memphis Police Department officers charged for the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were suspended or reprimanded in prior incidents while working for the department, according to recently unveiled personnel files.

Two of the officers were written up after failing to fill out required reports about the use of force during arrests. Two other officers were suspended without pay for traffic accidents, and one of those officers was suspended for failing to file a report about an incident of domestic abuse.

The officers faced little if any consequences, according to reviews of the officers’ records, and they were praised in at least two instances, with other officers describing their actions as one-time events.

Two officers were written up after failing to fill out required reports about the use of force during arrests, and two others were suspended without pay for traffic accidents, records reveal

One day after the funeral of Tyre Nichols, as mourners demanded Congress take action on national police reform legislation, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with members of Congress on Thursday afternoon to discuss their options.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that the meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus will be a “real conversation about police reform” but she did not detail a path forward or potential executive actions if a Republican-controlled House and deadlocked Senate fails to advance a bill.

In a statement on 29 January, caucus chair Steven Horsford said that members are “calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities.”

“The brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was murder and is a grim reminder that we still have a long way to go in solving systemic police violence in America,” he added.

President Biden intially gave Congress a deadline to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in 2021 on the one-year anniversary of that man’s death.

The White House also quietly abandoned plans that year for a national commission on police oversight to focus on the legislation. In April of 2021, Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice said a commission would not be the “most effective way” to implement those reforms, based on “close, respectful consultation” with civil rights groups.

At Tyre Nichols’ funeral on Wednesday, his godsister LaToya Yizar read out a heartbreaking poem echoing some of the final words of the 29-year-old Black man as he told officers: “I’m just trying to go home.”

Watch the touching moment below:

‘I’m just trying to go home’: Tyre Nichols’ godsister reads heartbreaking poem at funeral

A leaked incident report on Tyre Nichols’ arrest and fatal beating by Memphis police officers contains glaring inaccuracies that were later exposed after the release of bodycam and surveillance footage.

The report, written two hours after Nichols’ beating on 7 January, claimed that the 29-year-old was “irate” and refused lawful detention, tried to start a fight with officers, and also attempted to take an officer’s gun, during an initial traffic stop.

Video evidence released on 27 January told a very different story, showing officers swarming Nichols’ car and dragging him out, shouting contradictory commands and using pepper spray and a taser on him while he was trying to comply.

The Independent’s Bevan Hurley has the full story:

Memphis police claimed in an incident report that Tyre Nichols was ‘irate’, refused arrest, fought officers and tried to steal a gun from one.

President Joe Biden will meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday to have a “real conversation about police reform,” according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

She told reporters at a press briefing on Wednesday that the administration will continue to push for congressional passage of the bill, which passed in the formerly Democratically controlled House of Representatives in 2021 but stalled in the Senate.

Ms Jean-Pierre did address whether the White House would consider executive actions.