Family members, civil rights leaders and politicians on Wednesday called for an end to recurring police violence against Black Americans during the funeral of Tyre Nichols ... the 29-year-old who was fatally beaten by Memphis police officers last month.
HARRIS: "This is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe...
Vice President Kamala Harris - who flew to Memphis - addressed the congregation, offering condolences as well as a call to action.
HARRIS: "...as vice-president of the United States, we demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Joe Biden will sign it."
The Memphis Police Department fired five of the officers involved in the attack, who also are Black.
Prosecutors then charged them last week with second-degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and oppression.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has often spoken at the funerals of victims of police brutality, decried the five officers as "thugs" and traitors to the civil rights movement as he eulogized Nichols in the city where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
SHARPTON: "You didn't get on the police department by yourself...People had to march and go to jail and some lost their lives to open the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing?"
A number of others involved in the traffic stop and the aftermath were either relieved of their duties or suspended
Police video of the confrontation released by the city on Friday showed officers dousing Nichols with pepper spray and pummeling him with punches, kicks and baton blows as he cried out for his mother. One officer was seen firing a Taser stun gun at Nichols when he attempted to flee.
Tyre's Mother Rowvaughn Wells:
"The only thing keeping me going is the fact that I really truly believe my son was sent here on assignment from God."
