Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The “Death Squad.” The Place-Based Investigations Unit.
Scorpion.
However, there is a recurring trend of mistreatment observed in the specialized “street crime” squads that were established in police departments nationwide as a reaction to the increasing occurrences of homicide and crimes related to drugs and firearms.
The theories of policing that have become popular over the decades are an outgrowth of advocating for attention to be concentrated on high-crime areas, where residents with lower incomes typically experience fewer white gangs or drugs.
In 2017, the Department of Justice discovered that in Chicago, such divisions have played a part in residents perceiving the police as “an occupying force” that create an atmosphere of “an open-air prison” in certain communities. Their forceful strategies are extremely infamous – and remarkably alike – to the extent that in numerous cities they are referred to as “jump-out boys” due to the manner in which officers pour out of their vehicles to confront individuals during stops.
“One resident of Chicago informed investigators that they surveil our streets as though they are the enforcement officers for animals and we are the creatures.”
The proliferation of these street crime squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis’s Scorpion unit were charged with beating a 29-year-old Nichols Tyre to death, which should have been a routine traffic stop.
Last month, Ben Crump, a lawyer representing Nichols’ family, who are taking legal action against the city, expressed in a public letter to the city of Memphis, “The reason behind Tyre Nichols’s death lies within the very nature of this policing culture.” “What we have witnessed in Memphis this month and in various locations over the years is that the conduct of these groups can transform into misconduct resembling that of a ‘wolf pack’.”
Often, high-crime areas are seen as targets for police units with a history of corruption, criminal violence, discrimination, and abuse, despite numerous complaints. These units have been disbanded in the past due to severe incidents, including the use of deadly force, and then later reestablished under a different name, gaining popularity again politically after a few months or years.
The killings of Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, and Breonna Taylor, along with other instances of police brutality over the past three decades, have been linked to several well-known and overt specialized units.
Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has extensively written about the militarization of police, exclaimed, “These specialized squads are veering off track. There are numerous instances of this spiraling into a horrifying situation.”
“It occurs so frequently that one must deduce that this is an imperfect model.”
Tyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit
On the evening of January 7th, members of the Memphis Police Department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for driving recklessly.
In the darkness, the policemen, shouting vulgarities, pulled him out of his vehicle and compelled him to lie on the floor. Nichols and a few of the additional officers were sprayed with pepper spray, which was utilized by a fellow member of the team.
Nichols escaped and sprinted down a nearby road.
On the body-camera footage, a statement is audible from one of the officers who remained at the scene of the stop, expressing a desire for the individual to face physical harm.
The city has released footage that reveals how officers located Nichols approximately half a mile away after around eight minutes. They used pepper spray on him, shook him, sprayed him, and kicked him in the head. Furthermore, some officers punched him in the head while others kept him standing as Nichols stumbled and made incoherent moaning sounds.
Officers handcuffed Nichols and positioned him against a car after a few minutes. Nichols remained mostly quiet and still for approximately 20 minutes prior to being placed into an ambulance.
Three days later, Nichols, who was described by his family members as a carefree skateboarder and photographer with his mother’s name inked on his arm, passed away. According to investigators, the officers involved in the incident that led to his death stated that he sustained fatal injuries during the “use-of-force” altercation.
During the autumn of 2021, Memphis initiated Scorpion by forming four groups consisting of 10 officers each, with the sole objective of addressing instances of violent crime. In that particular year, Memphis recorded over 300 homicides, surpassing the count of 290 in 2020, which was significantly higher compared to the preceding years prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.
Merely a couple of months after founding Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already expressing his pride in the team’s contribution to changing the circumstances.
“They have seized weapons 253 and vehicles 270, along with cash totaling $103,000. The Scorpion Unit has made a total of 566 arrests, including 390 felony arrests, since its inception in January 2022 through October 23rd last year.”
Cerelyn Davis, the police chief of Memphis, dissolved the department following Nichols’ murder.
Police in major cities have established aggressive and dedicated units that specifically target neighborhoods believed to have a high crime rate. Residents in Baltimore, who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit and the abuses by the Gun Trace Task Force, can relate to the contours of Nichols’s death. Atlantans can recall the era of frisk-and-stop, while New Yorkers resonate with it.
An elite squad’s mistakes led to Breonna Taylor’s death
The Location-Focused Inquiries division in Louisville, Kentucky was designed to aid law enforcement in decreasing some of the most persistent occurrences of aggressive criminal activity in the urban area.
In 2019, a medical technician named Taylor Breonna was fatally shot during a botched police raid. The unit responsible for the raid, which had been established six months prior, was later disbanded. Their primary objective was to confiscate firearms and narcotics.
The initial mission of the unit was to target suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles away from Taylor’s home, but the police erroneously suspected her ex-boyfriend of being involved in drugs, causing the investigation to rapidly broaden its scope.
Taylor was fatally shot by law enforcement, who discharged their weapons at the couple after Taylor’s boyfriend injured one officer in the thigh. Internally, Taylor’s boyfriend, who later informed the police that he believed an intruder was attempting to enter, forcibly entered Taylor’s residence using a battering ram, neglecting to comply with the warrant’s stipulation of announcing their presence, based on inaccurate intelligence provided by the Place-Based Investigations Unit, undercover officers.
The warrant to search Taylor’s home was justified by her and other officers, not based on evidence, but on a “instinctive belief,” as acknowledged later by one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit in a plea agreement.
The demise of Taylor played a role in triggering the surge of nationwide demonstrations against police violence during the summer of 2020.
The creation story behind the Place-Based Investigations Unit at Eastern Kentucky University, as explained by Professor Kraska, demonstrates how well-intentioned academic researchers can assist police officers and other law enforcement squads in the surrounding country.
Tamara Herold, a former police officer from Cincinnati, consulted with the police department in Louisville. She is now a criminologist at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. Her study focuses on the potential correlation between sustained reductions in crime and the increased presence of police in high-crime areas with high levels of crime in the Louisville department.
Police departments are still being presented with the proposal by Herold, who has stated that Taylor’s demise was a “terrible calamity” but is “not a defining characteristic of this endeavor.” The Washington Post revealed that nine additional cities had embraced the framework two years following Taylor’s passing.
Herold did not respond to the request for comment. Acknowledging that “strain can be done if the police-community relationships are not addressed,” Herold told Police 1 podcast last month. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect. Policing hot-spots can be very effective in counting cops.
Ray Kelly, the former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk and has consulted with a regional anti-crime group in Memphis called Scorpion, which emerged after the creation of the city’s most controversial policing strategies, including the anti-crime units.
According to the Marshall Project, the city had completed this task by 2019. Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly was employed at that time, suggested that Memphis should enhance the number of personnel in specialized divisions to combat street crime.
Davis, the police chief of Memphis, also has previous experience with specialized units focusing on street crime.
The disbanded Atlanta street-crime squad known as Red Dogs, led by Davis during a period in Atlanta where she advanced through the ranks, including heading a unit, faced lawsuits and claims of mistreatment before she assumed control of the Memphis PD in 2021, having previously commanded the force in Durham, North Carolina.
Elite police units are magnets for scandal
Nearly every major city has had a prestigious division that has been disbanded after leaders determined that it exceeded acceptable boundaries.
The article “An Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the drug activity reports would descend on the team, making arrests and seizing cash and drugs.” Later claimed to be an acronym for “Georgia’s Out Run Drug Dealer,” it was named after a football play. The Red Dog unit was created in 1987 by George Napper, the commissioner of public safety in Atlanta, during a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine.
The newspaper stated, “When the squad conducts an area sweep, individuals, particularly young, black males, are instructed to place their face down, hands behind their head, and hit the ground. This is an important measure taken by the squad to minimize the flow of drugs into the city,” said Mr. Napper, a police official.
Two decades later, concerns were raised about the effectiveness and methods of the unit that had come to a head, despite the fact that lawsuits were filed claiming that employees and patrons of a gay bar, the Eagle, were illegally detained and subjected to homophobic slurs while handcuffed on the barroom floor, resulting in settlements of over $1 million.
Over the past few decades, the Atlanta elite operations have come to an end. In the 1970s, the anti-robbery squad known as “Stress” was disbanded in Detroit, after members shot and killed two individuals during a game of poker in an off-duty apartment in Wayne County. In 2007, amidst a wide-ranging corruption scandal, the Special Operations Section in Chicago was disbanded. Ultimately, prosecutors charged the members with conducting illegal traffic stops and breaking into homes to rob residents. Eleven members pleaded guilty and went to prison, including one individual who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer, collaborating with the federal investigation.
The special investigations section of the Los Angeles Police Department, known as the Rampart scandal, was involved in many shootouts with a notorious group called the death squad. One of their members, who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker, flipped on his colleagues and was caught in 2000. This incident led to the disbandment of the CRASH team, which had been notorious for their corrupt practices.
The Massachusetts Department of Justice responded to a report by the Bureau of Narcotics about the abuses of firearms by the team. It was reported that in 2021, the team focused on shifting claims of bogus overtime filing and cash stealing, which included crimes such as robbing drug dealers. In 2017, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force in Baltimore were convicted and charged.
Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effective
Many police leaders and criminologists say that specialized units do the work that other officers in uniform can’t do, such as taking down criminal networks, gathering information on the flow of guns and drugs, and surveilling gangs. They also mention that these officers don’t have the time or the tools to respond to calls to 911 or conduct patrols.
Jorge Camacho, a former prosecutor from New York who is currently affiliated with Yale Law School, expressed, “Law enforcement agencies claim that these divisions are established in reaction to the community’s request for specialized law enforcement.” Furthermore, these divisions can gain favor in the political realm.
The special investigations section of the Los Angeles Police Department, known as the Rampart scandal, was involved in many shootouts with a notorious group called the death squad. One of their members, who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker, flipped on his colleagues and was caught in 2000. This incident led to the disbandment of the CRASH team, which had been notorious for their corrupt practices.
Meanwhile, police leaders argue they are crucial to combating crime.
Last year, Florida’s Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who formerly headed the Orlando Police Department, informed CNN, “incarcerated numerous criminals to aid in resolving the problem. They make a multitude of commendable apprehensions, many noteworthy cases. It is effective.”
Wayne Jenkins, the head of the task force, was reported by The Baltimore Sun to have engaged in stealing from individuals. Additionally, the Gun Trace Task Force had been the subject of complaints by police leaders for several years before it was dissolved in 2017. These units, which sometimes enjoy support from elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement, can foster and conceals abusive practices and corruption from scrutiny.
According to the Sun, Jenkins, who had an extraordinary ability to deliver satisfactory results, was widely regarded as “a promising individual” until his apprehension for racketeering offenses in 2017.
There’s not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad, suggesting a confluence of factors including racism, inadequate supervision, militarized training, and mission overreach, according to experts interviewed by Insider.
The Police Executive Research Forum criticized U.S. Police academies’ “militaristic method” of training for causing officers to perceive community members “as adversaries” in a recent report.
Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said that some units within the elite officers’ supervisors could begin addressing the issues by lowering the ratio.
Alpert expressed his curiosity about the potential outcome, stating, “When you have these youthful, assertive, forward-thinking police officers grouped together, without any restrictions.” The need for additional oversight and regulation for these teams was emphasized by suggesting “increased supervision and control.”
Camacho stated that a problem arises when law enforcement officers solely possess a hammer, as they have a tendency to view every situation as if it were a nail.
“You have a group of officials with a directive to investigate murder,” he stated, urging them to be “extremely vigilant.”
“They perceive anything as a sign of violent crime,” he added, “and react accordingly.”
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man”
In New York, cities have consistently found ways to resurrect them, the notorious police unit that has been disbanded twice after decades of abuses.
The saga of the cyclical nature of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how these squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even though their tactics and mission remain the same, even after egregious incidents.
“Reporter from The New York Times wrote that the Crime Street NYPD, also known as the department’s elite squad of commandos, dispatched nearly 400 officers to chase down dangerous fugitives, muggers, and rapists each night, in order to get illegal guns off the streets and make neighborhoods less menacing.”
They wore t-shirts with a quote from Hemingway, indicating that there are definitely no men armed enough who like hunting as much as those who really never care for anything else thereafter.
The division accounted for less than 2% of the personnel but successfully confiscated 40% of the illicit firearms seized by the NYPD.
In the late 1990s, the number of homicides tripled, causing panic and a rise in the size of the Street Crime Unit. Rudy Giuliani, the mayor at that time, preached a doctrine of zero tolerance, even for minor offenses, and advocated for policing windows that were broken.
In a city struggling with violent crime, authorities promoted the Street Crime Unit as a positive aspect.
In 1998, Howard Safir, the commissioner of the NYPD, informed the New York Daily News that he wished everyone could take a drink from their bottle and express their enthusiasm.
On February 4, 1999, four individuals from the Street Crime Unit discharged 41 rounds at Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, when they claimed he made a motion to retrieve a weapon from his pocket. This incident occurred while Diallo was positioned in the entrance area of his residence building in the Bronx.
Diallo was later discovered dead during multiple investigations into his wallet. The officers, who were unarmed, were temporarily reassigned to desk duty and acquitted of criminal charges.
For many years, the police shooting incited a whirlwind of allegations that the widespread aggression of the Street Crime Unit, specifically towards impoverished, African American and Hispanic New Yorkers, had been disregarded.
In 2002, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had no choice but to dissolve the Street Crime Unit because of the public outcry following Diallo’s tragic demise and a lawsuit filed by a group of individuals claiming that the department’s implementation of stop-and-frisks amounted to unlawful racial profiling.
By 2020, the number of anti-crime squads expanded to almost 600 officers. Another collective legal action, initiated in 2008, claimed that NYPD officers conducted a higher number of stop-and-frisks during the early 2000s compared to the 1990s. Furthermore, their strategies proliferated: numerous police personnel were assimilated into newly formed undercover teams, known as anti-crime units, which had the identical objective of deterring violent crime. Nevertheless, the essence of the Street Crime Unit endured.
Jonathan Moore, a civil rights lawyer from New York who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, informed Insider that the core issue lies in the fact that the majority of department leaders are unwilling to address the principles of the Constitution.
In the year 2013, Eric Adams, who was a state senator at that time, testified in federal court that the intention behind conducting numerous patdowns on New Yorkers was clearly based on race.
According to an analysis by The Intercept, plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, accounted for or participated in 31% of police shootings since 2000, even though they make up just 2% of the police force.
Demonstrations against the excessive use of force by law enforcement have become a symbol of Eric Garner’s suffocation-related demise in 2014, Sean Bell’s lethal shooting in 2006, and the fatal shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally unstable individual, in 2018, all of which took place in Brooklyn. The law enforcement units responsible for these infamous instances of police violence were implicated in these tragic incidents.
At that moment, the former commissioner Dermot Shea expressed, “The NYPD has the ability to distance itself from excessive violence.” Subsequently, a different police commissioner made the choice to disband these departments in response to the demonstrations demanding racial justice in the summer of 2020.
Two law enforcement officials are facing a dangerous and escalating crime situation, causing a state of panic. The Neighborhood Safety Teams have been rebranded during this period, with the controversial squads being reintroduced by Mayor Adams, who was previously the Mayor and is now in his second term.
To interrupt “the movement of firearms in our urban areas,” he additionally stated that the teams were essential. However, Adams assured that he would not replicate the errors made previously.
The most frequent type of arrest made by officers is possession of a fake ID, often reported in State City. The neighborhood safety teams have made arrests with guns, but they have done nothing to address the issue. Their early record has not been promising.
Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies
The notorious squads in New York have disbanded and reorganized, with the location being far away. Two years later, it was reconstituted, but the Interdiction Street Squad of the New Haven Police Department was dissolved in 2007 due to a scandal involving bribery and theft. It was partially blamed for a series of police shootings, leading to its forced dissolution under the Department of Justice in 2013. However, it was resurrected as the Street Narcotics Unit under a new name in Miami.
According to experts, cities that create dedicated teams to address street crimes may potentially replace one type of violence with another.
“Expressed Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has authored a book about Atlanta’s Red Dog division, ‘These units introduce a fresh degree of hostility and menace to the community.'”
The urban center additionally formed a fresh expert squad to assume its position: the APEX group. Following the closure of the unit in Atlanta, the APEX unit was rebranded as the Titan group in 2021.
“As stated by Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights, “the individuals in the community were the only ones who altered their attire upon the introduction of the APEX unit.”
He is suing the city and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that they say he found during an interaction with the police. Maurice Stokes-Chalmers, 19, told the media that he was thrown into a fence by a group of officers, including one accused of killing Nichols. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment by the Scorpion Unit.
In 2021, Haley Demetrius, one of the officers from the Memphis Police, was disciplined for not reporting an incident involving a woman who had her shoulder dislocated and was yanked out of a car by a resigned colleague. NPR reported that four out of the five officers charged in Nichols’s death had two to six years of experience.
The lawsuit filed in 2016, in which Haley was implicated, stated that Haley was among the corrections officers who mistreated him at a jail in Shelby County, resulting in the dismissal of the case.
Moore, who was involved in the New York City stop-and-frisk case, stated that street-crime teams frequently fulfill the desires of politicians and policymakers. However, he pointed out that even with an adequate number of supervisors, the problem with elite units is that certain ones are overburdened.
“Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied,” he said. “They want them to go out and be aggressive.”.