The Police Unit That Was Supposed to Keep Memphis Safe

This episode contains descriptions of violence. The death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, at the hands of officers in Memphis last month has intensified calls for fundamental reform in policing. Those calls were echoed yesterday by President Biden, who hosted Mr. Nichols’s parents at the State of the Union address.Today, we hear about a Times investigation into the special team of officers, known as the Scorpion unit, that is accused of killing Mr. Nichols.Guest: Mike Baker, the Seattle bureau chief and a national correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: For 14 months, officers from the high-profile Scorpion unit patrolled Memphis with an air of menace.City leaders had praised the Scorpion unit as a key strategy for fighting crime. Now they are trying to assess whether it was flawed from the start.The unit has been disbanded, but Memphis wasn’t the only city to turn to specialized police teams.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.