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February 12, 2023

There may have been a personal angle to Tyre Nichols’s death

By Andrea Widburg

Although the left (including Joe Biden at the State of the Union address) has tried very hard to turn Tyre Nichols’s death into a racial passion play, the fact remains that all five officers involved in the physical assault on Nichols are black. The left was left arguing that even black police are racists, so police must be defunded to end racism. Now, though, there’s a rumor that may have some supporting fact that Nichols had a history with one of the police officers. It’s an assertion that, if true, points to a larger cultural problem isonn too many black communities.

One of the notable things about Nichols’s death is that the footage showing the police interaction with him starts only after the situation had gotten heated. We have no idea what precipitated the chain of events. From the beginning, though, there were rumors that Nichols had a personal connection with one of the officers involved. That rumor came from within the circles in which Nichols and Officer Demetrius Haley traveled:

To give context to that tweet, Sir Maejor, a “Civil Rights Activist” and actor, is open in his belief about what really happened that day. No matter the facts, he’s blaming “white supremacy.”

But back to that rumor. Newly released evidence, without proving such a personal connection, nevertheless suggests that there was a more personal element at issue here than originally met the eye. Officer Haley did text photos to people, including a “female acquaintance”:

One of the fired former police officers accused in the Tyre Nichols beating allegedly took a photo of Nichols as he lay on the street, and sent it to six other people including a female acquaintance, according to documents obtained by WREG.

[snip]

In the documents for Demetrius Haley, the files note:

“On your personal cell phone, you took two photographs while standing in front of the obviously injured subject after he was handcuffed. In your Garrity statement, you admitted you shared the photo in a text message with five (5) people; one civilian employee, two MPD officers, and one female acquaintance.”

The documents also state that Haley transmitted the photo to a sixth person, in violation of police policy.

(Hat tip: PJ Media.)

So, what we have here is a rumor and a fact that could support the rumor or could be completely irrelevant. Ultimately, we’re back where we started, with the rumor being just that: A rumor.

Subject to that factual reality, I want to assume for the moment that the rumor is true and that Demetrius Haley’s “ex-girlfriend & baby mama” was involved with Nichols. Nichols, in turn, has a 4-year-old son, although we don’t know if his child’s mother is that specific “ex-girlfriend” who is the “baby mama” of another man.

In other words, this is the revolving door of relationships and parenting that, sadly, is fairly typical for the black community. As of four-plus years ago, almost half of black children lived with a single mother. (I’m betting it’s even higher now.)

Not only are the children living without stability, but the fathers also have ongoing, albeit tenuous, relationships with the mothers, although the legal obligations are hazy at best. Even if the relationship is over, they’re still bound by the child, into whose life other men (and half-siblings) keep appearing.

There is no way that these fluid, amorphous situations can be endlessly amicable. Part of having a stable community is having a nuclear family (or an extended family built around nuclear relationships, rather than around layers of mothers and grandmothers). Boys learn self-control from their fathers, girls are less likely to be promiscuous, and the family unit is less likely to be destabilized by a constantly revolving cast of characters, many of whom may not like each other.

Image: Police beating Tyre Nichols (cropped). Wiki commons image.

Correction: This article originally said Nichols had a 14-year-old son. That was a typo. His son is four.

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