Following the deaths of Darius Chappell and Tyrin Johnson at the hands of the Memphis Safe Task Force, the NAACP is calling for a federal investigation into the actions of the Task Force, nearly one year after the National Guard was deployed to the predominantly Black city in Tennessee at the request of Gov. Bill Lee and at the urging of the Trump Administration.
“The Department of Justice cannot continue to stand by while Black lives are taken,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote in a statement. “The DOJ has a fundamental responsibility to support, protect, and defend the United States Constitution — and let me be entirely clear: that Constitution includes the rights, the safety, and the futures of Black Americans. When officers fail to deliver equal protection under the law, the federal government must step in with its investigative authority.”
He added, “We demand a thorough, transparent federal investigation. We demand accountability. We will not allow the names of Darius Chappell and Tyrin Johnson to be overlooked. We demand immediate suspension of National Guard activity in Memphis, and we will fight until justice is served.”
Johnson, 20, was shot and killed by National Guard members on July 5 after authorities said he turned toward the U.S. guard members, who were responding to a report of shots fired. His grandfather, a former corrections officer, is demanding to see video evidence of the shooting, disputing the guard members’ initial report.
“Show me the video,” Evaniel Johnson told The Associated Press. “Please show me that — and then I’m OK. Until you show me that, I’m gonna fight and advocate for my grandson until there’s no breath in me.”
Chappell was stopped by officers in the middle of the road in Clarksville, Tennessee, where officers deployed a K-9 unit and used a taser to apprehend him. He died four days later at the Montgomery County Jail. Both the Clarksville Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are looking into his death.
Police accountability has largely been neglected during Trump’s second administration. Under the Biden Administration, numerous police forces across the country came under the purview of the government, largely in relation to overpolicing communities, excessive force and events that led to the deaths of Black and brown men and women. Under Trump, the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database was shut down and more protections were established for officers, an example of “regressive policing” according to the ACLU.
State Rep. Gabby Salinas (D-Memphis) was among state lawmakers who sued Lee last year over his deployment of the National Guard and continued to raise questions about the lack of transparency.
“This really concerns me because any operation should be thought of before the deployment takes place,” Salinas told Fox 13 in Memphis. “What does the beginning look like? What are our goals? What are our objectives? There should be a middle and an end. We don’t have any of that for this deployment.”
