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Toledo law students honor Tyre Nichols, call for police reform at candlelight vigil

Attendees said another vigil had to be organized for yet another Black person killed by police, showing that it's past time to reform law enforcement nationwide.

TOLEDO, Ohio — In the days following the release of body and surveillance camera footage showing Memphis police officers savagely beating Tyre Nichols, protests and vigils happened across the country. 

In northwest Ohio, the University of Toledo held one of its own on Monday night through the College of Law. A somber atmosphere filled the evening air as at least 50 people gathered to remember Nichols.

Attendees said another vigil had to be organized for yet another Black person killed in a repeated cycle of police brutality, showing that it's past time to reform law enforcement nationwide.

"These are things that are happening over and over and over," second-year law student Ryan Niskar said. "We think they would stop after the first few times."

As law students, they say they've seen gruesome videos before. But the four videos released of the violence that led to Nichols' death were especially haunting.

"That made me more uncomfortable than I have ever seen," Niskar said. I felt like we've teleported back to the 1960s."

Not everyone has watched the videos, which show the officers striking Nichols multiple times, pepper spraying him, tasing him and leaving him laying limp against the side of a police car without immediate medical attention. Some don't want to experience the pain of watching another person die at the hands of the police.

"I personally haven't watched the video because I feel like I'm traumatizing myself at this point," Lexi Hartfield, a member of the Black law student association, said. "I just feel less safe."

But the vigil is also the group's way of addressing systemic problems in the U.S. Young aspiring lawyers can work to change these nationwide issues, Rebecca Zietlow, associate dean of the College of Law, said.

"When someone is tragically killed in this way by police officers, it directly affects the legal profession and lawyers and these are the young lawyers who are going to be making a difference," Zietlow said.

Hartfield said superficial changes in changes in police departments won't prevent more police brutality. Rather, issues like overly aggressive police need to be fixed.

"I think a lot of times people get lost in 'we need to hire more black officers, that's what we need' but that's not really the issue," Hartfield said. "It's police brutality, that aggressive nature and the police system that really needs to be attacked."

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