Footage of the violent arrest that led to the death of Tyre Nichols has been made public
It appears to show Memphis police officers shouting profanities and taking turns to kick and punch the 29-year-old after a traffic stop
His mother says no-one should go through what she is going through - and says the five former police officers charged over his death "disgraced their families"
Protesters in Memphis have been calling for an end to police violence and holding signs reading 'Justice for Tyre'
"It was the police culture in the US that killed Tyre Nichols," lawyer Ben Crump said earlier during a news conference
President Biden has called Mr Nichols' parents, expressing his condolences and mentioning the loss of his own son Beau
Five police officers - who have all now been fired - are facing murder charges. Lawyers for two of the accused say they will fight the charges
In the last few minutes, video showing the incident involving Tyre Nichols and five Memphis police officers has been made public.
Four separate videos have been released.
Our reporters and editors are now reviewing the footage - which is likely to contain distressing content.
Stay with us.
President Biden says 'image of America' at stake
Moments ago, White House reporters asked President Joe Biden what was at stake as the nation prepares to watch the arrest video of Tyre Nichols.
Biden said "innocent lives" were most at stake tonight, adding that the video also had "a lot to say and do with the image of America".
"It has a lot to do with whether or not we're the country we say we are. That we're a country of law and order, and means by which we can peacefully protest."
"Let the courts make the judgement," he said.
We're now seeing images of businesses in downtown Memphis covering their windows with plywood boards out of concern for protests later tonight.
The family of Tyre Nichols, as well as President Joe Biden and other officials, have called on protesters to remain peaceful.
Image source, Reuters
Image source, Reuters
Image source, Getty ImagesTyre Nichols' mother speaks to the press on Friday
If you're just joining us, here are some of the latest headlines:
Nada Tawfik
BBC News, Memphis
We spoke to Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis about Tyre Nichols’ death and the video of his encounter with police.
Law enforcement has not made the video public yet, but have spoken extensively to the press and public in advance of its release.
Davis said she’d been shocked and “appalled” when she first saw the video two weeks ago. But she also said that “there is not enough footage to support what the [traffic] stop was about."
“The reason behind this stop has not been substantiated through video or even any radio,” Davis said. “Something happened that we can’t explain. The encounter [seems to have] began at an aggressive stage.”
Davis also said that, “If you look at the video, race has nothing to do with it. Ego… a lot of other factors. These officers tried to stop Mr Nichols in various iterations but were unsuccessful.”
She pledged that the department was conducting “an individual evaluation of all units” in the wake of Nichols’ death.
Barbara Plett Usher
BBC News, Memphis
Image source, Getty ImagesNichols' mother at a news conference earlier on Friday
President Biden had called the mother of Tyre Nichols just before I spoke with her.
RowVaughn Wells told me Biden offered condolences and said “he’d do everything in his power to get things changed”.
I met her outside the Mt Olive church. She seemed tired following a lengthy press conference but held closely by her husband and lawyer - she spoke forcefully.
Earlier she had urged parents not to let their children watch the video which reportedly shows five police officers brutally beating her son. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to watch it.
“When I walked into the hospital, I saw my son – I already knew what they did,” she said.
“I don't need to see a video to show me what they did. I saw the end results. My son is dead. I don't need to see a video to know that he's not here anymore.”
But the more she’s heard about what happened the more she’s convinced that police initially lied to her – they said he resisted arrest for drunk driving and they had to tase and pepper spray him.
“But when I got to the hospital, I saw a whole different thing,” she said.
Photos of her son in hospital, she said, "don't look like a person being tased and just pepper sprayed.”
Wells has said that the five black police officers let down the black community and disgraced their families.
But she told me that when it came to the use of excessive force, the issue was the race of the victim not race of the police.
Tyre Nichols' mother speaks to the BBC
“It's not about the colour of the police officer. We don't care if it's black, white, pink, purple. What they did was wrong,” she said.
“And what they're doing to the black communities is wrong. We're not worried about the race of the police officer. We're worried about the conduct of the police officers.”
She said she wants the authorities to investigate anyone who was involved in her son’s death – from the police officers to the emergency responders to the fire department.
Rodney King, pictured in 1993, was badly injured in the beating
We've been reporting the warning from Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis that the bodycam footage of the police stop of Tyre Nichols is distressing and "worse than Rodney King" ahead of its release to the public.
Let's take a look back at the moment, more than 30 years ago, that caused shock and outrage around the world.
Footage showed black motorist Rodney King being beaten by four white police officers in Los Angeles in 1991 - while others looked on.
While the use of excessive force was not uncommon, what made the beating of King unusual at the time was that it was captured on camera.
The black-and-white witness footage of four white officers beating and kicking him nearly to death was one of the first instances such brutality had been filmed.
The community had been grappling with excessive use of force by the majority white police department for years - but now, there was proof.
The trial and subsequent acquittal of the officers involved sparked violent riots.
Anger led to days of looting and burning, 55 deaths and $1bn (£610m) of damage to the city and a state of emergency was declared.
The outcry eventually forced changes to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Read more here on the trial and aftermath and more here from eyewitnesses to the infamous attack.
Image source, ReutersRace played a factor in the death of Tyre Nichols even if the five officers charged in his death were also African-American, according to reverend and civil rights activist Al Sharpton.
Sharpton told the BBC that the crime is particularly painful because of the race of the officers.
"We fought to put blacks on the police force," he said. "For them to act in such a brutal way is more egregious than I can tell you."
Sharpton also said that he believes that the outcome would have been different if the suspect in the incident was white.
"I do not believe these five black police officers would have done this had be been a young white man," he said.
President Biden called Tyre Nichols' parents, and spoke to them for about ten minutes, the Washington Post reports.
RowVaughn Wells told Biden that her son "actually tattood my name on his arm", according to the Post's Emily Davies.
Biden also mentioned the loss of his son, Beau, who died of cancer in 2015, and told Tyre's parents he empathised with their loss.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier today that Biden had been briefed on the video that reportedly shows Memphis police officers beating Nichols, but has not watched the footage itself.
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Image source, Getty ImagesIn a White House press conference, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters President Biden has not seen the body cam footage, but he has been briefed on the incident.
"Last night the president extended condolences to the family of Tyre Nichols and to the entire Memphis community," she continued to say, "We must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oath".
The White House urged protests to remain peaceful.
Nada Tawfik
BBC News, Memphis
The Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones told me the council is planning to watch the videos of Tyre Nichols' incident for the first time this afternoon.
He feels it is his duty to see for himself what took place, but some members have chosen not to watch it. The existence of video evidence, he says, has allowed authorities to catch police brutality in a way they weren’t able to in the past.
Nevertheless, he says it hasn’t successfully reduced the number of incidents. In fact, according to figures from a non-profit research group, Mapping Police Violence, killings by US police reached record numbers last year. Council Chair Jones believes the only thing that will lead to change is if juries issue guilty verdicts on a wider scale whenever officers act illegally.
Some of the five officers involved in Tyre Nichols' death were part of an elite crime-fighting unit in the Memphis Police Department that has already courted controversy.
Scorpion - which stands for "Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods" - is a 50-person unit with the stated mission of bringing down crime levels in particular areas, with a focus on high-impact crimes such as car thefts and gang-related offences.
In the wake of Tyre's death, local man Cornell McKinney told Memphis news channel WREG that he had a tense encounter with the unit on 3 January.
He alleges that officers, travelling in unmarked vehicles, threatened to "blow his head off", pointed a weapon at his head and accused him of carrying drugs. He complained to the Memphis Police Department after the incident but says he has not heard back.
A lawyer for Nichols' family, Antonio Romanucci, has accused the unit of misconduct in the latest incident.
“They were in unmarked cars, why are they conducting traffic stops?” he told WREG. “This is a pretextual traffic stop, which, let’s call it what it is, it’s a racist traffic stop."
Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Memphis
At the VIP Barbershop less than a mile away from where Tyre Nichols was attacked by five ex-Memphis Police officers, PJ, the owner, turned up the volume on the press conference downtown.
As a photo of Tyre flashed on the TV, PJ told the room how he first realized he was the same man he would often see skateboarding through the shop’s parking lot.
“He would ride his skateboard with headphones on, just coasting and minding his business”, he said. “They didn’t have to do all that, man.”
“All that” seemed to encompass everything from stopping Nichols in the first place to savagely beating him until he was taken to hospital from his injuries that ultimately led to his death.
As the city braces for video of Nichols' beating to be released later tonight, the tight-knit black community in Memphis seems to be collectively holding it’s breath.
“Everyone knows what the video is going to show,” PJ said.
“When they showed how he looked, I can imagine what they did,” another patron agreed.
“It’s going to be sad to me more than anything.”
Following George Floyd's tragic death in May 2020, a video depicting a white Minneapolis police officer - Derek Chauvin - kneeling on Floyd's neck went viral.
It was nearly impossible to escape it and it sparked a conversation on whether we should stop sharing videos of black trauma. The BBC's Levi Jouavel reported on the topic one year after the killing.
At 10 minutes and nine seconds long, it was the viral video that sparked protests across the world.
It also helped bring Floyd's killer, police officer Derek Chauvin, to trial.
But the content is extremely distressing and for some, sharing videos of aggressions against black people is more damaging than helpful.
Sharing photos or videos of someone's trauma or pain is often referred to as "trauma porn".
In 2021, Jaydeene Binns said she remembered the moment she first saw the George Floyd clip on Instagram.
"I saw the video by accident because somebody hadn't put a trigger warning before showing it on their story. I didn't have any sort of control," she told Radio 1 Newsbeat.
"If that was my family member, how would I ever feel comfortable with their last moments being on an Insta story?".
Jaydeene believes the sharing of videos like this shows how society devalues the experiences of black people.
"That person's life has been disrespected," she says.
"Having brutality videos reminds you how worthless some people might see you and that's really hard to take in."
You can read the full story here.
Image source, ReutersPolice video of the encounter with Tyre Nichols is "appalling", FBI director Christopher Wray says.
He tells reporters he has seen the footage ahead of its release this evening.
"What happened in Memphis is obviously tragic. I have seen the video myself and I will tell you I was appalled," he says.
Wray joins the voices urging a peaceful and non-violent response when the video is made public.
Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Memphis
It's a quiet and cold January day here in Memphis. The downtown of the city is completely empty. We're heading now to the intersection where the traffic stop happened with Tyre Nichols and police.
If there are going to be protests later, there are no signs yet. Businesses aren't boarded up, and there doesn't appear to be an increased police presence.
But police across the country are preparing for potential protests after the video of the incident is released later this evening. The video is allegedly being released later so that students have time get home safely from school.
DC police department has recalled officers from leave to be on alert from tonight - and other big cities have put out statements to prepare.
But for now, it's a quiet Friday day in Memphis. Nichols' mom said yesterday that if the public plans to protest, that her son would have wanted it to remain peaceful.
We'll be back later with more.
A press conference with Tyre Nichols' family in Memphis has now ended.
Stay with us as we bring you the main developments and analysis.
"We ask for prayer and peace" attorney Ben Crump says in his closing remarks.
He says when the video is released later this evening, that's when the world will see why we have to have justice for Tyre.
Gareth Evans
Reporting from Washington
Image source, Getty ImagesYou may recognise Ben Crump, who's leading this news conference and marshalling the gathered media. "I'm often referred to as black America's attorney general," the 53-year-old said just moments ago.
The Florida lawyer has represented the families of some of the most high-profile victims of police violence, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and now Tyre Nichols. In many ways he has become the go-to man for cases like these.
"He's everywhere," explained Kenneth Nunn, a law professor from Florida who has followed his career closely. "But if anything were to happen to me or my family - he would be the number I'd call."
Crump uses what he calls the "mediasphere" to ramp up the pressure on a city or police force. He says he is able to pick and choose cases that will "shock the conscience" of the American people, and reportedly turns down at least a dozen requests for every case he takes on.
Allisa Findley, whose brother Botham Jean was shot and killed by police in Dallas in 2018, told me her family hired Crump because of his past successes. "He knows how to manoeuvre every situation because he has dealt with so many cases," she said. "He gets results and that's what any family wants. We want closure and he gets us that."