A Tale of Two Tapes: Americans Become Eyewitnesses to Pair of Brutal Attacks
Footage released in the separate vicious beatings of Tyre Nichols, Paul Pelosi
A pair of gory offerings were released Friday, for viewing by the American public.
But rather than a couple of slasher flicks at your local cineplex, these were the release of the real-time footage of two separate heinous, brutal — and infamous — personal beatings.
One involved the release by authorities in Nashville, Tenn., making public more than an hour of footage of the violent beating of Tyre Nichols in which officers held the Black motorist down and struck him repeatedly as he screamed for his mother.
The other was a video clip — running just over 1 ½ minutes — and was part of a batch of evidence released in the case against suspect, David DePape, in the beating attack against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband, Paul, in the couple's San Francisco, Calif., home.
The videos, each showing humanity at its most ugly, shines a gruesome but necessary light on twin issues before the nation: police brutality against Black Americans, and the results of a growing wave of political violence against those associated with the federal government.
The video in the Tyre Nichols case emerged one day after officers said to be responsible for the attack, were charged with murder in Nichols' death.
The footage shows police savagely beating the 29-year-old FedEx worker for three minutes while screaming profanities at him throughout the attack. The Nichols family legal team has likened the assault to the infamous 1991 police beating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.
The video from the Oct. 28 Pelosi assault illuminate a harrowing sequence: Paul Pelosi alerting a 911 dispatcher of an armed man who was feet away, listening to the call and interjecting comments; DePape beating Pelosi in plain view of the officers; and DePape, after his arrest, describing his plans to kidnap and snap the bones of the then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In each case, the footage appears almost too much for the family of each to bear.
“I want to say I’ve never seen the video but what I’ve heard is very horrific — very horrific — and any of you who have children please don’t let them see it,” Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, said at a press conference. “I just want to ask for prayers for my family and this whole community and I want to say to the five police officers that murdered my son, 'You also disgrace your own families but you know what I’m gonna pray for you and your families,’ because at the end of the day this shouldn’t have happened.
“That’s right, this just shouldn’t have happened and we want justice for my son,” Wells added.
Nancy Pelosi, too, has no intention to watch the video of the bloody attack on her husband.
“It’s with a grateful heart and on behalf of my entire family that we continue to thank people for all of their prayers, that they continue to send us, asking about the progress my husband is making. And he is making progress, but it will take more time,” the former speaker said. “As you know today there was a release of some information. I have not heard the 911 call, I have not heard the confession, I have not seen the break-in and I have absolutely no intention of seeing the deadly assault on my husband’s life.
“I won’t be making any more statements about this case, as it proceeds except to, again, thank people and inform them of Paul’s progress. But that will be the end of what I will say about the case,” she added.
It fell to others to describe the violence, the brutality and the evil in those two videos.
“I saw officers hitting on him. I saw officers kicking him. One officer kicked him like he was kicking a football a couple times,” said Nichols’ stepfather. “The most telling thing about the video to me was, the fact that it was maybe 10 officers on the scene and nobody tried to stop it.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray also watched the Nichols video.
“What happened in Memphis is obviously tragic. I've seen the video myself, and I will tell you, I was appalled. I'm struggling to find a stronger word, but I will just tell you, I was appalled,” he said at a Justice Department press conference. “The FBI working with the Justice Department, takes great pride in our color-of-law investigations. And we will pursue, as has already been announced an investigation here, and we'll do it professionally — without fear or favor, by the book — as I think is expected of us.”
In the case of Paul Pelosi, multiple experts praised his composure as he called 911 when his attacker first entered the home.
“Yeah, for those of us who actually care about the facts and evidence, the release today shows a 911 caller, Mr. Pelosi, who actually has kept his wits about him in an impressive manner, trying to convey to the 911 dispatcher while his attacker is standing there listening and watching that he’s in trouble,” said Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI. “And he did it effectively enough so that ultimately she prioritized a police response to that residence.”
Further, the release of the video in the Pelosi crime should put to rest baseless and absurd conspiracy theories from the political right that Paul Pelosi somehow knew his attacker, or had invited the man in.
“We see video of the attacker forcibly, with difficulty, smashing with a hammer the window in the back of the house, or the sliding glass doors in the back of the house, making forcible entry,” Figliuzzi said in an on-camera appearance on MSNBC. “Not, as is claimed in really devious and dark deceptions in far-right areas, someone who was invited in or previously known to Mr. Pelosi or a guest of Mr. Pelosi. We see none of that happening.”
The Pelosi video is so graphic that Fox News host Harris Faulkner felt compelled to apologize to viewers Friday afternoon for initially airing the newly-released Pelosi body camera footage without a warning for viewers.
Faulkner's statement included an impromptu comment on humanity vs politics for viewers of the right-wing network.
Her apology prompted a quick dialogue with Fox personality Kennedy, who admitted it was “hard for me to see things like that, as it is for you.”
“And as it would be for his beloved, for Nancy Pelosi. Who in every instance, politics aside — whatever your feelings may be, if that is your loved one on the ground — I mean, that was really quick between the time the police answered and thank the good lord that they were there,” Faulkner said.
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