Protests after video of fatal Memphis police beating is released – as it happened

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We will leave it there for tonight, here are the key moments from today:

• Memphis police released footage of deadly traffic stop that resulted in the death of 29 year old Tyre Nichols.

• The disturbing video footage, which was released in several parts, showed Nichols crying out “mom” as he was on the ground with officers around him. Some of the chaotic footage shows officers punching and kicking Nichols. One officer shouted that he would “baton the fuck outta of you”.

• The footage has elicited comparisons to the beating of Rodney King in 1991. Here is a description of the videos released by the Memphis police department.

• The sheriff of Shelby county, Tennessee announced that two deputies who were at the scene after Tyre Nichols was beaten have been “relieved of duty”.

• Five police officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr and Justin Smith – were charged on Thursday with murder. Here is an explanation of the charges.

• Protests erupted across the country, including in Memphis, where the connecting I-55 bridge between Memphis, Tennessee and West Memphis, Arkansas was blocked.

• 3 protesters were arrested in New York after a police vehicle window was smashed, among what was described as a mostly “peaceful” demonstration.

• Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, said she has not been able to bring herself to watch the videos of her son’s beating, urging carers to shield children when the footage is being played. “The humanity of it all. Where was the humanity? They beat my son like a pi​ñata,” she said in an interview with CNN. “People don’t know what those five police officers did to our family.”

• Joe Biden spoke with Wells and Nichols’s stepdad, Rodney Wells, to express condolences. “There are no words to describe the heartbreak and grief of losing a beloved child and young father,” the president said. “But Mr and Mrs Wells, Mr Nichols’s son, and his whole family deserve a swift, full and transparent investigation.”

As protests in Memphis wind down, organisers can be heard encouraging demonstrators to “bring that same energy” to a planned demonstration on Saturday:

Pizza and water were handed out to protesters, after streetlights along the interstate were cut off earlier tonight:

CNN is reporting that 3 protesters have been arrested in New York tonight, after a mostly “peaceful” demonstration.

The protest that has shut down the I-55 bridge in Memphis has not seen any arrests. There was an estimated 100 protesters, and seem to be dispersing in the last half hour.

Mostafa Rachwani with you, taking over from Maanvi Singh, and beginning in New York, where police have arrested at least one person after protesters smashed the window of police vehicle in Times Square.

The New York Times is reporting that around 200 protesters have gathered on 46th Street and have blocked traffic, with dozens of police officers on standby.

It comes as protests erupted across the country, including in Memphis, where protesters blocked the Interstate 55 bridge that carries traffic over the Mississippi River toward Arkansas.

Dozens of protesters have also gathered in Lafayette Park in Washington, near Black Lives Matter Plaza and, as well as on K Street.

Protesters have also gathered in Boston, marching down Tremont Street, with traffic also being affected.

NBC is reporting protests in Sacramento, San Francisco, Atlanta, Asheville, Philadelphia, Providence and Dallas as well.

• Protests have erupted across the US in reaction to graphic footage showing Memphis police officers’ brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man and father to a four year old. The footage has elicited comparisons to the beating of Rodney King in 1991. Here is a description of the videos released by the Memphis police department.

• Five police officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr and Justin Smith – were charged on Thursday with murder. Here is an explanation of the charges. The officers were members of a specialized street crimes unit that lawyers for Nichols’s family and advocates are calling to disband.

• Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, said she has not been able to bring herself to watch the videos of her son’s beating, urging carers to shield children when the footage is being played. “The humanity of it all. Where was the humanity? They beat my son like a pi​ñata,” she said in an interview with CNN. “People don’t know what those five police officers did to our family.”

• Joe Biden spoke with Wells and Nichols’s stepdad, Rodney Wells, to express condolences. “There are no words to describe the heartbreak and grief of losing a beloved child and young father,” the president said. “But Mr and Mrs Wells, Mr Nichols’s son, and his whole family deserve a swift, full and transparent investigation.”

  This has been Maanvi Singh. The Guardian’s Mostafa Rachwani will continue to follow developments.

Tyre Nichols, the latest in a long line of young American Black men whose death is tied to the police, was a “beautiful soul” and home-loving son with his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, his family and friends have said.

Described as “a momma’s boy” by his mother, RowVaughn Wells, the 29-year-old Memphis, Tennessee, resident, the youngest of four children, was also a father himself. He leaves a four-year-old boy whom he loved to teach skateboarding.

“You’ve got to put that skateboard down. You’ve got a full-time job now,” Nichols’s stepfather Rodney Wells recalled telling Nichols during a press conference this week.

“He looked at me like, ‘Yeah, right,’ because that was his passion.”

Friends at the Tobey skate park in Memphis held a candlelit vigil for Nichols on Thursday evening.

The job, Wells said, was as a shift employee at FedEx for the last nine months, but home was never far from his mind even as he was working. He would come home every evening, mid-shift, for his meal break, RowVaughn Wells said.

She believes that’s what he was doing on the night he was stopped and killed by five Memphis police officers. “He was trying to get home to safety,” she told CNN on Friday.

Read more:

The sheriff of Shelby county, Tennessee has announced that two deputies who were at the scene after Tyre Nichols was beaten have been “relieved of duty”.

In a statement, sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr said he watched video of the beating for the first time tonight, and has “concerns” about the deputies’ conduct. Bonner did not say why he was concerned or describe the deputies’ conduct.

The office is launching an internal investigation, Bonner said.

Images of Tyre Nichols being beaten have drawn comparisons to Rodney King’s 1991 beating.

King, who was brutally attacked by Los Angeles police department officers, barely survived. His daughter, Lora Dene King, spoke at a viewing of the footage released by the Memphis police today.

“I’m sorry that we’re still in the same place, more than 30 years later,” she said.

Los Angeles erupted after the officers who beat King were acquitted.

Earlier, Lora Dene King told NBC: “People wonder where the anger comes from, this is where. If you see someone time and time again, who looks like you, your dad, your brother, how would you feel? It’s a pattern and we’re still here.”

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In New York’s Times Square, protestors have gathered with chants and signs.

And so have police officers. Reporters on the ground say some protestors have been detained.

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As the Guardian reported in 2020, during a wave of protests following the police killing of George Floyd, police arrested, detained and attacked protestors. Amid warnings that the protests tonight could boil over, activists – including Reverend Earle Fisher below – have pointed out that police are often the aggressors when violence breaks out at demonstrations.

Body camera footage, released this evening, caught an officer saying, “I hope they stomp his ass. I hope they stomp his ass,” as he and others chased down Nichols

Earlier, the officers warn that Nichols will get “blown out”.

Nichols’s family’s legal team has said an independent autopsy found he “suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating”.

Some of the most chilling moments in the videos capture the officers tying their shoes, and helping each other clean the pepper spray from each others’ eyes after beating Nichols.

“He was a human piñata for those police officers,” said Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for the family. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

Protestors are gathering across the US to protest police brutality.

In California, Stevante Clark, whose brother Stephon Clark was killed by police in 2018 while standing in his grandmother’s back yard, is leading the march in Sacramento, California.