There was an uncomfortable build up to the release of Footage of Nichols’ brutal murder at the hands of five Memphis police officers.

Photo: @AttorneyCrump/Twitter

I don’t believe you can prepare the masses for a lynching, but the Memphis Police Department, the media, and the politicians that enable police brutality all certainly tried.

In the leading days to the release of body cam footage showing five Memphis police officers severely beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, who later died of his injuries, law enforcement officials wanted to not only warn us of the brutal visual awaiting us, but that they were angry about what happened.

Cerelyn “CJ” Davis, police chief of the Memphis Police Department, told CNN’s Don Lemon that she was “outraged” after seeing the “alarming” video — describing it as about the same if not worse” than footage of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director David Rausch said, “I’m sickened by what I saw” and described the officers’ actions as “absolutely appalling.”

And FBI director Christopher Wray shared with reporters, “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.”

As appalling as the footage is, however, we were also told to remain calm once what happened was made public.

On Thursday, President Biden released a statement: “I join Tyre’s family in calling for peaceful protest. Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable.”

There are many people who understandably believe that the police can not be reformed. Joe Biden is not one of those people, though. As a candidate, Biden promised to pass legislation following the brutal killing of George Floyd at the hand of Minneapolis police officers — which sparked international protests.

As president, Biden failed to deliver on that promise.

In spite of that failure, he routinely dismisses those that believe in defunding the police, repeatedly stressing that the answer is to not defund the police.

If violence were never acceptable, Biden would reflect that in policy and legislation.

Those priorities have not changed, so the police continue to be allowed free reign to kill us as they please.

Perhaps each of those cops are appalled by what they saw, but if they were that appalled by what happened, policing would have changed by now. Enraging as the footage is, brutality even in this magnitude is not new.

Instead, all they did here was prepare us to be enraged by more brutality.

I made the mistake of looking at some of the footage following its release. I couldn’t watch it beyond a few minutes. I don’t have it in me right now to watch someone be tortured and beaten to death like that.

It made me so angry.

The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith — face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.

In a news conference on Thursday, a lawyer for one of the police officers claimed, “No-one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”

That’s not what I took from my partial viewing.

Not a single one of those cops treated Tyre Nichols like he was a human being.

He was, as Nichols family lawyer Antonio Romanucci put it, “He was a human piñata. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, non-stop beating of this young boy for three minutes.”

I wish nothing but the worst for the people that tortured Tyre Nichols.

I hope Tyre’s mother and the rest of his family and loved ones are finding as much comfort and peace as they can in this awful situation those cops put them in.

Tyre Nichols deserved better. He should still be here. And his murder should be covered with more tact than it has been.

I was so uncomfortable with the countdown-to-premiere-like packaging from the media about Tyre Nichols’ killing.

Not only because it seemed to help law enforcement and politicians sell their narrative to the public, there was a level of desensitization that only further dehumanized Tyre.

I struggled with how to phrase my feelings about what I was seeing — they’re best described by Dr. Stacy Patton’s tweet: “All this advance media hype about tonight’s release of the Tyre Nichols murder by police is reminding me of late 19th and early 20th newspaper announcements that invited the public to come watch a lynching.”

Indeed, I knew there was a precedent, but it was surreal and deeply disturbing to see coverage of a Black man being beaten, tortured and ultimately killed presented in this way.

There shouldn’t be countdowns to footage of a lynching.

Lastly, the officers accused of brutality being Black is as unremarkable a tidbit as they come. You don’t have to be white to service white supremacy and its institutions. Only the naive find that a novelty, but naivete on the issue is more forgivable than using the story to pathologize your own.

What happened to Tyre Nichols is not related to “Black-on-Black crime” or, as some legendary basketball players with unfortunate stances argues, “WE ARE OUR OWN WORSE ENEMEY!!!”

Black people are not the problem, racism and its systems are.

Don’t trivialize what happened to Tyre Nichols by hyping at his murder as content. Don’t use it as an opportunity to further trash your own. Give him more than that.

He’s had enough stolen from him.