AMERICA'S ANGST

From messy, divisive politics to a series of mass shootings, and now black officers brutally beating another black man to death as seen in bodycam videos, America's domestic convulsions are cause for serious introspection

- Kenneth Tiven in Washington

CERTITUDE is a noun meaning to be confident or convinced of something with complete assurance and freedom from doubt. Certitude is the mental and active state of the behaviour of various parts of American society this year. One act of violence by five black American police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, illustrates perfectly how certitude has divided America.

The Memphis cops stopped Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black American, driving to his mother's home. Their body cameras capture their menacing behaviour and attitude. At one point, as they roughed up Nichols, one cop says on the video: "I hope they stomp his ass. I hope they stomp his ass." They did! He died in the hospital several days later.

Is this an example of police certitude about treating anyone if they feel like it? The five have been fired from the department, charged with second-degree murder, and faced with state and federal civil rights crimes. "It is going to remind many people of Rodney King," said Ben Crump, a noted civil rights lawyer representing Nichols' family, referring to the 1991 beating by Los Angeles Police Department officers.

This reporter, one of the many covering that story, remembers it as an early viral video before the Internet, taken by a neighbour with a video camera. That tape went global on TV news reports after the Los Angeles Police Department refused to accept it. This event ignited the Los Angeles riots and crystallized the idea of the widespread adoption of body cameras for police officers in America.

The January 7 encounter begins with a traffic stop at an intersection, during which the police approach Nichols' car, yelling and threatening him with their guns raised. An officer yanks open the driver's side door and pulls Nichols out of the car as he protests that he "did not do anything". Nichols was a serious photographer, an avid skateboarder and, at age 29, unlikely to resist. He did not.