By — Kenichi Serino Kenichi Serino Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/police-special-units-like-the-one-that-killed-tyre-nichols-are-common-heres-why-theyve-drawn-criticism Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Police special units like the one that killed Tyre Nichols are common. Here’s why they’ve drawn criticism Nation Feb 3, 2023 6:28 PM EDT After releasing a video on Jan. 27 showing the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, the Memphis Police disbanded the Scorpions, the special police unit that counted among its members the men accused of his murder. In a statement, the Memphis Police Department said it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate” the unit, which stood for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods and had been tasked with cracking down on violent offenses. The Scorpions – who wore special uniforms and drove Dodge Chargers with the group’s seal on the side – were one of the many specialized police units that have proliferated in large police departments across the country. But while ubiquitous, some have attracted controversy, including for misconduct that has resulted in deaths, protests and lawsuits. WATCH: Mourners issue call for police reform at funeral of Tyre Nichols Specialized units like the Scorpions were started as police departments across the country began to professionalize during the first half of the 20th century. These units were tasked with combating a particular problem such as gangs, muggings, firearms or — in the case of the Scorpions — violent crime. Greg Donaldson, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said cities and police departments have often sought special units as a solution in periods of rising crime, such as the crack epidemic in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and the more recent increase in violence in some cities during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The genesis of [these units] is the public wants something done and they don’t care how it’s done,” Donaldson said. “The desire from the public for a specialized ability to deal with a certain issue becomes something that is politically motivating” for law enforcement, said David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. “That’s all good.” These forces, which might be detective units, police assigned to pursue a particular suspect or operational street units, are common in larger police departments, Klinger said. WATCH: Police tactics again under scrutiny in wake of killing of Tyre Nichols But to Donaldson, these forces “almost always, city after city, lead to big-time problems and quite often tragedies,” in part due to what the challenge that they’ve been tasked with. “They’re on the line. They’re crossing the line [of what’s acceptable.] They’re physical. They’re doing exactly what they were asked to do.” Memphis Police Department officers attend a roll call briefing of the department’s Scorpion unit, an acronym for The Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, in Memphis, Tennessee, from a video from Nov. 2021. Memphis Police Department/ Handout via REUTERS Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, a criminal justice reform organization in Memphis, was not very familiar with the Scorpions before Nichols’ death. But while Spickler was shaken, he was not necessarily surprised. “They’re no different from many before them, both here and beyond. They were tasked with policing certain neighborhoods, which are overwhelmingly Black, and pulling people over and executing pretextual stops,” he said, referring to stops used by police in order to conduct an unrelated search for drugs, firearms or other illicit items. There is limited research on police special units. Some studies have shown that they are not necessarily more likely to engage in use of force. However, a 2020 study of police in Tempe, Arizona, showed that police in special units are four times as likely to engage in the use of force as ordinary patrol officers. Here’s how experts see the mission of these units, and how their use can sometimes lead to misconduct. What’s different about special units? Specialized units can be effective, Klinger said. Patrol units spend most of their shift responding to radio calls or writing traffic tickets, leaving only a handful of hours to do “proactive” police work. “The guys and gals that are working the specialized units, they’re not driven by the radio,” Klinger said. “They can focus on the particular problem of whatever it is that the police hierarchy says, ‘This is what we determined to be a problem.’” Special units also often have their own culture, beginning with their names. “They come up with cool acronyms. I’m not really a big fan of such stuff,” said Klinger, who called it a “bit sophomoric.” According to Donaldson, the names of special units are sometimes designed to match their intention and reassure the public they’ll pursue criminals. WATCH: Tyre Nichols’ death puts spotlight back on excessive police use of force “They’re designed to intimidate the bad guys. That’s why they’re called the Scorpion unit. They’re not called the ‘helpers’ or ‘defenders.’ They’re called these names which are designed to instill respect through fear,” Donaldson said. Johnson said because special units like Scorpion are intended to target and search out criminal activity rather than react to it, the job draws more ambitious police officers. “You have this intense level of competition among this group. You have a lack of oversight. You have these different types of uniforms.” Critics of the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy watch deliberations moments before City Council members voted to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vetoes to establish an inspector general for the New York Police Department. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Klinger believes that it’s not necessarily a problem if a police officer who is willing to get into more confrontations with violent criminals is drawn to a special unit. “Some people like to jump out of airplanes. I think it’s insane, but that spirit of adventure, that’s good as long as it is rooted in a maturity that understands that the excitement has to come your way, you don’t get to create the excitement,” he said. “That you are responding to the needs of your community. But Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminology at Georgia State University, said there’s a question of whether the “reward structure” of specialized units – like promotions or praise – can lead to misconduct. Johnson was a police officer in Memphis until 2010. Over the last week he’s been in contact with his former colleagues. “Many of them, they recognize the changes need to be made, but they don’t feel this event really represents who and what they are — and I know them as people,” Johnson said. Oftentimes, the reward structures in policing “force them to do these things,” he added. “There is a type of culture that permits and sees this.” A checkered history Special units have also been implicated in some of the most notorious cases of police misconduct. In the 1970s, the Detroit Police Department created the “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” unit, known as STRESS, to combat street thefts and other crimes with undercover police officers. The unit soon drew protests due to the number of its operations that resulted in the shooting deaths of Black residents. The unit’s efforts culminated in the raid of a private poker game played by deputies of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, all of them Black men. One deputy was killed and another severely wounded. In the late ‘90s, the Los Angeles Police Departments Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (“Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums”) was implicated not only in police misconduct but crimes including bank robbery. The unit was shuttered and several officers were fired or forced to resign. More than 100 convictions of people targeted by the division were overturned and the civil suits forced the department to pay the largest police misconduct settlement in the city’s history. In 2020, a plainclothes unit in New York City was disbanded after years of protest over its widespread use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which a federal judge found to be unconstitutional. Now the plainclothes unit is being reconstituted by Mayor Eric Adams in response to rising gun violence in the city. Members of LA’s “Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums” division receive a police briefing in 1988. Photo by Jean Marc Giboux/ Liaison/ Getty Images Johnson said that while special units may use force at higher rates, they are “dealing with a different type of clientele.” Police who have “high productivity” are also likely to draw more misconduct complaints, and that more research is needed into how many complaints hold up after an investigation. Still, Johnson wondered why police departments don’t take greater measures to mitigate behavior in special units that would lead to misconduct. “It’s almost like in many of these instances that there’s a different standard for these units.” Why specific training matters Klinger argues that specialized units are successful when they are highly trained and properly supervised and when they have recruited selectively from police officers who have not drawn complaints. But this does not always happen. And it is possible that demand for specialized units may outpace the supply of qualified officers. “There shouldn’t be an issue of a mismatch between the number of slots in specialized units and the number of officers who are capable of filling them,” Klinger said. “There shouldn’t be, but there might be.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis admitted a “lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem” with the Scorpions. “When officers are working, you should have at least one supervisor for every group or squad of people,” Davis said. “Not just somebody who’s at the office doing the paperwork, somebody who’s actually embedded in that unit.” The five officers charged with the killing of Nichols were also relatively young and new to the police service. According to CBS News, less experienced police officers had been recruited to the Scorpions because older officers retired. Their training for the special unit totalled “three days of PowerPoint presentations, one day of criminal apprehension instruction and one day at the firing range,” CBS reported. Johnson said the lack of training in the case of the Scorpions amounted to “neglect.” “It’s obvious that they were incompetent — that they didn’t receive any training — and we see what the outcomes are,” Johnson said. “The blood is not only on the hands of those officers, but … the entire city of Memphis leadership.” Do specialized units stop crime? Formed in late 2021, the Scorpions had been lauded by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in his January 2022 state of the city address for their record – 566 arrests and seizure of 270 vehicles and 253 weapons in only a few months. But in the long run, Johnson does not believe specialized units and arrests alone can reduce crime. He blames aggressive police tactics for alienating communities the police are supposed to protect. “[Even] if you did prevent 50 homicides, how many people did you piss off? And you ruined the trust because how you do things. Short term, take [crime] out the street. Long term, my grandkids are still gonna hate you,” Johnson said. “I think you need these units, but I don’t think you need to rely on these units.” Spickler, for his part, does not believe more training, whether for specialized units or ordinary patrol officers, will ultimately bring down crime rates. He also disputes whether communities affected by violence really want more police interventions, including from specialized units or surveillance cameras. Tyre Nichols’ casket during his funeral at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church on Feb. 1, 2023, in Memphis. Photo by Andrew Nelles-Pool/ Getty Images “I don’t think if you sat down and said, ‘What is public safety and what does security mean to you?’ — the first thing that comes to mind is not gonna be blue light cameras, Dodge Challengers, and guns and officers.” “They don’t want to be held up. And they want to quit hearing gunshots and they want their kids and everything to be safe,” he said, “but the reason they’re not is because of generations of disinvestment and generations of exploitation of those [Memphis] neighborhoods.” “What we continue to call policing is fundamentally incapable of doing what the powers that be want them to do and what this community deserves,” Spickler said. Instead, he suggested putting in place more resources like mental health help for issues like addiction that are being policed. “A few communities in this country have done this. It’s not too crazy. It’s pretty crazy for Memphis, but not too crazy.” By — Kenichi Serino Kenichi Serino
After releasing a video on Jan. 27 showing the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, the Memphis Police disbanded the Scorpions, the special police unit that counted among its members the men accused of his murder. In a statement, the Memphis Police Department said it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate” the unit, which stood for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods and had been tasked with cracking down on violent offenses. The Scorpions – who wore special uniforms and drove Dodge Chargers with the group’s seal on the side – were one of the many specialized police units that have proliferated in large police departments across the country. But while ubiquitous, some have attracted controversy, including for misconduct that has resulted in deaths, protests and lawsuits. WATCH: Mourners issue call for police reform at funeral of Tyre Nichols Specialized units like the Scorpions were started as police departments across the country began to professionalize during the first half of the 20th century. These units were tasked with combating a particular problem such as gangs, muggings, firearms or — in the case of the Scorpions — violent crime. Greg Donaldson, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said cities and police departments have often sought special units as a solution in periods of rising crime, such as the crack epidemic in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and the more recent increase in violence in some cities during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The genesis of [these units] is the public wants something done and they don’t care how it’s done,” Donaldson said. “The desire from the public for a specialized ability to deal with a certain issue becomes something that is politically motivating” for law enforcement, said David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. “That’s all good.” These forces, which might be detective units, police assigned to pursue a particular suspect or operational street units, are common in larger police departments, Klinger said. WATCH: Police tactics again under scrutiny in wake of killing of Tyre Nichols But to Donaldson, these forces “almost always, city after city, lead to big-time problems and quite often tragedies,” in part due to what the challenge that they’ve been tasked with. “They’re on the line. They’re crossing the line [of what’s acceptable.] They’re physical. They’re doing exactly what they were asked to do.” Memphis Police Department officers attend a roll call briefing of the department’s Scorpion unit, an acronym for The Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, in Memphis, Tennessee, from a video from Nov. 2021. Memphis Police Department/ Handout via REUTERS Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, a criminal justice reform organization in Memphis, was not very familiar with the Scorpions before Nichols’ death. But while Spickler was shaken, he was not necessarily surprised. “They’re no different from many before them, both here and beyond. They were tasked with policing certain neighborhoods, which are overwhelmingly Black, and pulling people over and executing pretextual stops,” he said, referring to stops used by police in order to conduct an unrelated search for drugs, firearms or other illicit items. There is limited research on police special units. Some studies have shown that they are not necessarily more likely to engage in use of force. However, a 2020 study of police in Tempe, Arizona, showed that police in special units are four times as likely to engage in the use of force as ordinary patrol officers. Here’s how experts see the mission of these units, and how their use can sometimes lead to misconduct. What’s different about special units? Specialized units can be effective, Klinger said. Patrol units spend most of their shift responding to radio calls or writing traffic tickets, leaving only a handful of hours to do “proactive” police work. “The guys and gals that are working the specialized units, they’re not driven by the radio,” Klinger said. “They can focus on the particular problem of whatever it is that the police hierarchy says, ‘This is what we determined to be a problem.’” Special units also often have their own culture, beginning with their names. “They come up with cool acronyms. I’m not really a big fan of such stuff,” said Klinger, who called it a “bit sophomoric.” According to Donaldson, the names of special units are sometimes designed to match their intention and reassure the public they’ll pursue criminals. WATCH: Tyre Nichols’ death puts spotlight back on excessive police use of force “They’re designed to intimidate the bad guys. That’s why they’re called the Scorpion unit. They’re not called the ‘helpers’ or ‘defenders.’ They’re called these names which are designed to instill respect through fear,” Donaldson said. Johnson said because special units like Scorpion are intended to target and search out criminal activity rather than react to it, the job draws more ambitious police officers. “You have this intense level of competition among this group. You have a lack of oversight. You have these different types of uniforms.” Critics of the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy watch deliberations moments before City Council members voted to override Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vetoes to establish an inspector general for the New York Police Department. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Klinger believes that it’s not necessarily a problem if a police officer who is willing to get into more confrontations with violent criminals is drawn to a special unit. “Some people like to jump out of airplanes. I think it’s insane, but that spirit of adventure, that’s good as long as it is rooted in a maturity that understands that the excitement has to come your way, you don’t get to create the excitement,” he said. “That you are responding to the needs of your community. But Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminology at Georgia State University, said there’s a question of whether the “reward structure” of specialized units – like promotions or praise – can lead to misconduct. Johnson was a police officer in Memphis until 2010. Over the last week he’s been in contact with his former colleagues. “Many of them, they recognize the changes need to be made, but they don’t feel this event really represents who and what they are — and I know them as people,” Johnson said. Oftentimes, the reward structures in policing “force them to do these things,” he added. “There is a type of culture that permits and sees this.” A checkered history Special units have also been implicated in some of the most notorious cases of police misconduct. In the 1970s, the Detroit Police Department created the “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” unit, known as STRESS, to combat street thefts and other crimes with undercover police officers. The unit soon drew protests due to the number of its operations that resulted in the shooting deaths of Black residents. The unit’s efforts culminated in the raid of a private poker game played by deputies of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, all of them Black men. One deputy was killed and another severely wounded. In the late ‘90s, the Los Angeles Police Departments Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (“Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums”) was implicated not only in police misconduct but crimes including bank robbery. The unit was shuttered and several officers were fired or forced to resign. More than 100 convictions of people targeted by the division were overturned and the civil suits forced the department to pay the largest police misconduct settlement in the city’s history. In 2020, a plainclothes unit in New York City was disbanded after years of protest over its widespread use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which a federal judge found to be unconstitutional. Now the plainclothes unit is being reconstituted by Mayor Eric Adams in response to rising gun violence in the city. Members of LA’s “Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums” division receive a police briefing in 1988. Photo by Jean Marc Giboux/ Liaison/ Getty Images Johnson said that while special units may use force at higher rates, they are “dealing with a different type of clientele.” Police who have “high productivity” are also likely to draw more misconduct complaints, and that more research is needed into how many complaints hold up after an investigation. Still, Johnson wondered why police departments don’t take greater measures to mitigate behavior in special units that would lead to misconduct. “It’s almost like in many of these instances that there’s a different standard for these units.” Why specific training matters Klinger argues that specialized units are successful when they are highly trained and properly supervised and when they have recruited selectively from police officers who have not drawn complaints. But this does not always happen. And it is possible that demand for specialized units may outpace the supply of qualified officers. “There shouldn’t be an issue of a mismatch between the number of slots in specialized units and the number of officers who are capable of filling them,” Klinger said. “There shouldn’t be, but there might be.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis admitted a “lack of supervision in this incident was a major problem” with the Scorpions. “When officers are working, you should have at least one supervisor for every group or squad of people,” Davis said. “Not just somebody who’s at the office doing the paperwork, somebody who’s actually embedded in that unit.” The five officers charged with the killing of Nichols were also relatively young and new to the police service. According to CBS News, less experienced police officers had been recruited to the Scorpions because older officers retired. Their training for the special unit totalled “three days of PowerPoint presentations, one day of criminal apprehension instruction and one day at the firing range,” CBS reported. Johnson said the lack of training in the case of the Scorpions amounted to “neglect.” “It’s obvious that they were incompetent — that they didn’t receive any training — and we see what the outcomes are,” Johnson said. “The blood is not only on the hands of those officers, but … the entire city of Memphis leadership.” Do specialized units stop crime? Formed in late 2021, the Scorpions had been lauded by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in his January 2022 state of the city address for their record – 566 arrests and seizure of 270 vehicles and 253 weapons in only a few months. But in the long run, Johnson does not believe specialized units and arrests alone can reduce crime. He blames aggressive police tactics for alienating communities the police are supposed to protect. “[Even] if you did prevent 50 homicides, how many people did you piss off? And you ruined the trust because how you do things. Short term, take [crime] out the street. Long term, my grandkids are still gonna hate you,” Johnson said. “I think you need these units, but I don’t think you need to rely on these units.” Spickler, for his part, does not believe more training, whether for specialized units or ordinary patrol officers, will ultimately bring down crime rates. He also disputes whether communities affected by violence really want more police interventions, including from specialized units or surveillance cameras. Tyre Nichols’ casket during his funeral at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church on Feb. 1, 2023, in Memphis. Photo by Andrew Nelles-Pool/ Getty Images “I don’t think if you sat down and said, ‘What is public safety and what does security mean to you?’ — the first thing that comes to mind is not gonna be blue light cameras, Dodge Challengers, and guns and officers.” “They don’t want to be held up. And they want to quit hearing gunshots and they want their kids and everything to be safe,” he said, “but the reason they’re not is because of generations of disinvestment and generations of exploitation of those [Memphis] neighborhoods.” “What we continue to call policing is fundamentally incapable of doing what the powers that be want them to do and what this community deserves,” Spickler said. Instead, he suggested putting in place more resources like mental health help for issues like addiction that are being policed. “A few communities in this country have done this. It’s not too crazy. It’s pretty crazy for Memphis, but not too crazy.”