Stories from the SCORPION Unit

Larrico Coleman is listed as a suspect in a 2022 MPD report. He said the reality of his traffic stop was harsh. This stop involved SCORPION Unit #2, one of the teams within the larger SCORPION Unit, according to the report narrative.

“So I’m moving back and he’s like ‘don’t move m*****-f***** before I punch you in the back of the head’,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he was wrongfully detained, threatened and jailed. The encounter happened in front of his then 13-year-old son, who Coleman said now is even more terrified of police than before.

“That really upset me that my son had to see [them] do all this and talk crazy to his father and tell him you’re gonna hit me in the head,” he said.

Coleman is one of a few people who would talk about his SCORPION Unit encounter. He’s the only person, so far, who was willing to identify himself publicly.

“I was talking polite,” one man said. “It just was crazy to me because I don’t know how it changed from us just talking to, I mean, fully yanked, slammed. They had me there for a while. Of course, my face and everything was busted up like just from the ground.”

Other people who said they are victims of the SCORPION Unit’s “aggressive” tactics told us they’re worried about officers retaliating against them.

“I said, 'why [are] y’all taking my gun?'” one woman asked officers on the scene in 2022. “'What’s the reason? Y’all have no right to take my gun. This is my gun. I own this gun. I got a license to carry this gun.'”

In the narrative about this incident, police said the woman was parked in a lot with a “no loitering” sign for more than 10 minutes. Detectives said they “observed open liquor bottles in the car and smelled a strong odor of smoked marijuana coming from the car when they made contact with the occupants.” 

However, the woman in the report said she hadn’t been drinking or smoking marijuana.

The two women in the car who were listed as suspects were issued misdemeanor citations and had their pistols taken and tagged in the 201 Poplar Property and Evidence Room.

Another person listed in a 2022 report said officers “ganged up on the car, all the way around it. [They] pulled me up, opened the doors up, slammed me up against the car. I swear to God it was bad,” he said.

Inconsistencies and omissions with police reports

Secrecy is another common complaint amongst people who said they’re victims of the former SCORPION Unit’s use of force, with people telling us certain facts about use of force were omitted from their police reports.

“'Don’t tell officers that you have family members [associated with the department],'” Coleman recalls one officer telling him. “[They said] 'you never know who you telling’ like it’s a secret or something.”

The officer-written narrative of Coleman's traffic stop says, “Members of Scorpion Unit #2 were checking the area of National at Bayliss for criminal activity” just before pulling Coleman over. Coleman said his black Mercedes did not have a TN tag on it, which aligns with the report narrative.

Coleman knew the reason for being pulled over was his lack of a license plate because of his job selling and transporting cars.

“I got all my paperwork; I’ve been pulled over before,” Coleman said.

The report also says officers found a plastic container with marijuana inside Coleman’s front pants pocket. He denies this claim. Coleman said he would never smoke in his car, and he had his child in the backseat who he wouldn’t smoke in front of.

However, the officer-written report does not describe any use of force during the altercation. That’s consistent with hundreds of other reports in this open records request that don’t mention any physical altercation.

Several people we spoke with for this story said their charges have been lowered or dropped altogether. 

Claims against MPD officers’ use of force inevitably brought the federal government to town.

The Department of Justice launched a Pattern or Practice investigation into the City of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department. Since then, the DOJ has held multiple public meetings in Memphis, allowing community members to share their stories with the DOJ.

“There have been a number of allegations suggesting that the Memphis Police Department’s systems of training, supervision and accountability may not adequately prevent officers from engaging in conduct that violates the constitution and federal law,” DOJ’s Suraj Kumar stated.

The investigation is just a piece of the puzzle in the search for justice for those saying they were mistreated by the MPD. The DOJ is trying to see if there is a departmental history of excessive force.

Each meeting, several people attend and share their stories with the SCORPION Unit.

SCORPION Background

The SCORPION Unit only arrived in Memphis a little after Interim Chief C.J. Davis took over the department in 2021.

Former Mayor of Memphis, Jim Strickland, appointed Davis as the city's first female Chief of Police in April of 2021. Just months after her appointment, MPD launched the SCORPION unit.

In January 2022, during former mayor Jim Strickland’s state of the city speech, he emphasized the SCORPION unit's impact on the city. Strickland said between October 2021 and January 2022, the SCORPION unit was responsible for 566 arrests, nearly 400 of those being felony arrests.

He also mentioned the SCORPION Unit's seizure of hundreds of vehicles and weapons.

The high numbers in a short period of time were enough for bragging rights and to show Memphians the safety impact this OCU was having on the city.

The Organized Crime Unit operated for a little over a year until it was disbanded following the brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols. Nichols was beaten during a traffic stop in January 2023. He died from the injuries just three days later.

In the year since Nichols' death, Memphis City Council passed several ordinances to prevent similar incidents. One of the most controversial is the banning of pretextual traffic stops.

Local activists advocated for the passing of this ordinance for months. Activists took to the streets in protests, shutting down highways and filling every seat in city council and county commission meetings.

“We wanna see a tangible plan of what they’re gunna do,” activist Amber Sherman said. “How the ordinances are gunna be put into effect and whoever the police chief is, we wanna make sure that person also puts out a plan of what they’re gunna do.”

The fight for justice in Tyre Nichols’ case and several others who say they feel wronged by the once-active SCORPION Unit is ongoing.

The DOJ will continue meeting with Memphians who said they had issues with the department using excessive force.

The five officers involved in Tyre Nichols’ death are heading to trial.

Memphis City Council is still in flux on whether they will approve re-appointing Interim Chief C.J. Davis as Chief of Police.

Interim Chief Davis declined all interview requests for this story.

“It should be way better than that,” Coleman said. “We are citizens of the community. We abide by the law.”

These are just a few people’s stories out of hundreds of police reports.

If you have a story and are ready to sit down with the Department of Justice, you can contact them at community.memphis@usdoj.gov.