Tennessee Repeals Local Police Reform
Was the repeal Republican paternalism?
George Lakoff’s book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, makes a distinction between left and right through parenting approaches. He modeled the left after a nurturing parent and the right after a strict parent. A nurturing parent overprotects to prevent undesirable outcomes, while a strict parent prepares for them but acknowledges their inevitability.
Recently, a Lakoffian conflict erupted in Tennessee between the Republican-controlled state and the Democratic city of Memphis over a municipal ordinance commemorating Tyre Nichols.
Tyre Nichols was stopped for reckless driving in 2023 by members of the Memphis Police Department’s SCORPION unit. SCORPION, a specialized unit, patrolled high-crime areas, focusing on gang and drug-related offenses. Members of SCORPION took Nichols from his car, pepper sprayed him, tased him, and beat him up.
Nichols died at the hospital three days later.
Police body cameras filmed the majority of the deadly incident. The footage indicated that the police officers had no grounds to pull Nichols over, and their actions were unlawful. The Memphis Police Department quickly fired the officers, charged them with second-degree murder, and disbanded the SCORPION unit.
The president of the National Fraternal Order of Police argued that the actions of the officers…