MNPD Escalates Situations to Violence with Shoot-First Mentality
Police killings result from an institution that promotes violence. These killings are justified by media and shielded from scrutiny. From contributor Zach Jones.
Officers go through shoot-first training, extensively reported by Samantha Max and WPLN. MNPD has shot ten people in 2021. In March, Officer Josh Baker mistakenly pulled over Nika Holbert off of Brick Church Pike and escalated the stop to violence.
Zach Jones is a journalist based in Antioch who writes about law enforcement, gentrification, and local Nashville politics.
This post contains descriptions of police violence.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the hyper-violent altercations still happening with law enforcement, specifically MNPD, a year after the protests of the summer of 2020. I reference those protests quite often in my writing. Watching the spread of civil unrest and dissatisfaction spread across the country in real time was necessary. People have been fed up for a long time, I believe. I hear it in the conversations I have with my loved ones. I see it in the media I consume. This great mass of negative energy, simply, hangs over all of us. It can be hard to pinpoint why, but I digress.
I want the energy from last summer—that dissatisfaction, that frustration—to return. I’m not sure what it will take. Perhaps another bullet-ridden body or maybe the loss of all the daily comforts we have. An article for another time.
On March 12 of this year, Nika Holbert was pulled over by MNPD officer Josh Baker off of Brick Church Pike and Ewing Drive.
He ran the tags on the vehicle Holbert was driving and found that the owner of the vehicle, Demond Buchanan, had warrants out for his arrest. Upon pulling Holbert over and approaching the car, Baker quickly realized that it was Nika in the vehicle. He asked for her license, checked it, and then after a brief dialogue, ordered her out of the car. He then searched the car and her purse while Holbert called her mother and smoked a cigarette. After searching her purse he found weed, which Holbert had already told him about, and a ‘powder substance.’
The situation turned violent when the officer tried to handcuff and detain Nika without explanation.
Nika pulled away from Baker, asking: “What did I do?”
Baker responded by pulling out his taser and chasing her while repeatedly shocking her. After being chased back to the driver side of the car, Nika was tasered once again as Baker jammed the weapon into her neck. In an attempt to defend herself, she grabbed her gun. Baker told her to drop her weapon before the two opened fire on each other, wounding one another in the shootout. Nika fled the scene in her car which would later be found in a ditch, with her still inside. She’d later succumb to her injuries after being taken to Skyline Medical Center.
Holbert’s death at the hands of Officer Josh Baker was justified by local and national news outlets while Holbert herself was vilified. Demonizing victims of police brutality is nothing new, but after the recent outrage from the public against police violence, and the protest that dominated the previous summer as a result, the lack of response or examination of the event is extremely glaring. Yes, she shot at an officer, but everything else that led up to that moment deserves to be thoroughly examined as well. What warranted the scanning of Nika’s tags in the first place? The fact that she was driving a black Dodge Charger? How many black Dodge Chargers are driven across Nashville? Was there a traffic violation being committed beforehand to warrant the scanning? After running the tags, Baker called in for backup. Why didn't he wait for additional support to show up before he tried to detain her? What was the need to search the car after finding that Demond was not its driver?
The energy dedicated to searching into Nika Holbert’s past, compared to the light coverage of the officer’s actions, highlights the bias that Nashville news sources have. This bias can be also seen in government. Last summer’s push for police reform was met with pleasant smiles and cheering from the Mayor and councilmembers, while legislation both proposed and enacted showed the opposite. Mayor Cooper proposed an increase to the police budget by $17 million for a new precinct and $12 to purchase MNPD’s 5th and 6th helicopters. A lengthy council meeting on June 2, 2020, attended by hundreds of the same people who had just taken to the street in protest, led to an increased MNPD budget.
MNPD will receive additional funding after Governor Lee allocated $300,000 from COVID funds to give scholarships to new recruits in the police academy.
When you are being abused by law enforcement, what is the correct response? When Botham Jean was killed, justification was made. When Breonna Taylor was killed, justification was made for her murder as well. Nika Holbert is just one of the multiple people who have been killed by Nashville police this year. When she reached for the gun in her passenger seat, it was to defend herself. In the video, her painful grunts can be clearly heard as she’s being tasered. What choice did she have? Her past is not justification for an already corrupt system stepping on her rights as a citizen. The situation Nika was in is not an uncommon one. As funding increases for law enforcement, incidents like this will increase too.
Zach can be reached at zachary.a.jones13@gmail.com.
The title is "MNPD Escalates Situations to Violence with Shoot-First Mentality" but the main subject of the article is the interaction between Officer Baker and Ms. Holbert, in which Officer Baker did NOT shoot first.
"He ran the tags on the vehicle Holbert was driving and found that the owner of the vehicle, Demond Buchanan, had warrants out for his arrest." With this information alone it makes sense to me that the car would be searched and that Ms. Holbert would certainly not be allowed to drive the vehicle away. I want the police officers of my city searching for people who have warrants out. I disagree with the framing that Officer Baker inappropriately escalated the situation. If anything, I think he showed restraint by using his taser first. I do not think this case is a good example for your argument.