Lawyers for Tyre Nichols’s family filed a lawsuit Wednesday morning against the city of Memphis, its police department, Police Chief Cerelyn Davis and the officers involved in the brutal beating of the 29-year-old after a traffic stop in January. Nichols died three days later.

The 139-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee describes the beating as a “foreseeable product of the unconstitutional policies, practices, customs, and deliberate indifference of the City of Memphis and Chief Davis.”

The suit compares the beating to the 1955 killing of Emmitt Till and describes the officers involved as a “modern-day lynch mob.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the family, this week announced plans to discuss the lawsuit at a news conference later Wednesday. The complaint does not specify a dollar amount being sought in damages.

Nichols’s death sparked widespread outrage, fueled by the horrific nature of his injuries and the graphic video footage from police body cameras and surveillance cameras. Five officers directly involved in the beating were quickly fired and have been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes.

Joanna C. Schwartz, a UCLA School of Law professor and author of “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable,” said the lawsuit filed Wednesday stands out from most police misconduct cases because of the media attention the attack garnered; the clear and comprehensive video evidence released by the city afterward; and the immediate condemnation by city officials of the officers’ actions.

“There are many people who are killed by police who never had any public attention paid to what’s happened to them, so the lawsuit is the public’s introduction to the case,” Schwartz said. “But this is a case that has already been litigated in some manner on the international stage, and there’s been widespread agreement that what the officers did was wrong – criminal, even.

“I would be surprised if the case didn’t settle relatively quickly.”

Payouts for high-profile police misconduct cases have increased nationwide in recent years, studies show. Minneapolis settled a lawsuit filed by George Floyd’s family for $27 million in 2021, and the city of Louisville settled a lawsuit filed by Breonna Taylor’s family for $12 million in 2020. Smaller settlements often fly under the radar but account for the bulk of money cities spend on police misconduct, according to a 2022 Washington Post analysis.

The city of Memphis earmarked $1.25 million of its police budget for lawsuits in 2023; any resolution of the Nichols case would probably be significantly larger, experts said.

The fired Memphis officers told department officials they pulled Nichols over on Jan. 7 for reckless driving, an allegation Davis has said was not clearly substantiated in the days that followed. After officers attempted to physically restrain Nichols, he fled the stop on foot and was apprehended several minutes later. Body camera and surveillance footage depicts officers punching, kicking and swinging a baton at Nichols during the arrest. He died in a Memphis hospital on Jan. 10.

The officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills and Justin Smith – pleaded not guilty in February to the murder charges and other counts. They are due back in court May 1.

Since the beating, the Justice Department has announced an investigation into the Memphis Police Department, and the city council has passed an ordinance – the Tyre Nichols Driving Equality Act – that forbids traffic stops for what the council described as “secondary violations” such as expired tags or broken taillights. Civil rights activists are pushing for similar legislation in Shelby County, where Memphis is located, which would apply to the sheriff’s office as well.

“I feel really good about the progress we’ve made so far,” said Amber Sherman, president of the Shelby County Young Democrats. “I think the key thing here is accountability and making sure these ordinances are actually implemented and there’s oversight.”

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