Fox News host Jesse Waters says he saw no “death blows” in the body-cam footage of Tyr Nichols’ fatal beating at the hands of five Memphis police.
The footage shows police pulling Nichols over during a traffic stop and aggressively throwing him to the pavement while making threats and drawing guns.
“Put your hands behind your back, dog,” said a policeman. “I’ll knock your ass” he followed up before tasering Nichols.
More footage shows police repeatedly punching him in the head before pepper-spraying him as he calls out to his mother.
However, Waters suggested that the police may not have been responsible for his death at all.
“We don’t know if this guy was something,” Waters said. “And we don’t have an autopsy from the city, an official autopsy. Immediately, you know, I didn’t see any death. Perhaps it was the accumulation of blunt force trauma to the head.”
“Did you see anything that told you it was?” Waters asked his guest, retired NYPD officer Bill Stanton.
Stanton responded that he did not see any of the officers in the footage “stopping” on Nichols’ head or “kicking him in the face.” But the footage clearly shows two officers holding Nicholls down while a third gets up and kicks him in the head.
In Fox News Synergy, “The Five” anchor Brian Kilmeade also offered to defend the police hours before the footage dropped.
“Does it bother you that you have no police approach at all?” He said. “It looks overwhelming, I understand. But don’t we need both sides?”
Kilmeade – Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis, who previously said people should not “blindly follow the color blue” after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, is now singing a different tune, despite her condemnation of their actions as “heinous, reckless and inhumane.” . .”
“When the video is released in the next few days, you’ll be able to see for yourself,” Davis said Wednesday of Nichols’ now-fired police brutality.
All five cops have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression — and each will have a “day in court,” as Kilmede co-anchor Gillian Hunter reminded him.
