By ADRIAN SAINZ and JONATHAN MATTISE

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people, according to the findings of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched after the beating death of Tyre Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.

A report released Wednesday marked the conclusion of the investigation that began six months after Nichols was kicked, punched and hit with a police baton as five officers tried to arrest him after he fled a traffic stop.

The report says that “Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve.”

“The people of Memphis deserve a police department and city that protects their civil and constitutional rights, garners trust and keeps them safe,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in an emailed statement.

The city said in a letter released earlier Wednesday that it would not agree to negotiate federal oversight of its police department until it could review and challenge results of the investigation.

In the letter to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Memphis City Attorney Tannera George Gibson said the city has received a request from the DOJ to enter into an agreement that would require it to “negotiate a consent decree aimed at institutional police and emergency services.”

The Justice Department announced an investigation into the Memphis Police Department in July 2023, looking at the department’s “pattern or practice” of how it uses force and conducts stops, searches and arrests, and whether it engages in discriminatory policing. The investigation was announced six months after the January 2023 beating death of Nichols by police.

A consent decree is an agreement requiring reforms that are overseen by an independent monitor and are approved by a federal judge. The federal oversight can continue for years, and violations could result in fines paid by the city.

It remains to be seen what will happen to attempts to reach such agreements between cities and the Justice Department once President-elect Donald Trump returns to office and installs new department leadership. The Justice Department under the first Trump administration curtailed the use of consent decrees, and the Republican president-elect is expected to again radically reshape the department’s priorities around civil rights.

The city’s letter said “a legal finding supporting the contention that the City’s patterns and practices violate the Constitution requires a legal process,” which includes the city’s ability to challenge the DOJ’s methods of evaluating information and the credibility of witnesses.

“Until the City has had the opportunity to review, analyze, and challenge the specific allegations that support your forthcoming findings report, the City cannot — and will not — agree to work toward or enter into a consent decree that will likely be in place for years to come and will cost the residents of Memphis hundreds of millions of dollars,” the letter said.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter.

Police video showed officers pepper spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran away from a traffic stop. Five officers chased down Nichols and kicked, punched and hit him with a police baton just steps from his home as he called out for his mother. The video showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.

Nichols died on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating. The five officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired, charged in state court with murder, and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges.

Nichols was Black, as are the former officers. His death led to national protests, raised the volume on calls for police reforms in the U.S., and directed intense scrutiny towards the Memphis Police Department.

The officers were part of a crime suppression team called the Scorpion Unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death. The team targeted drugs, illegal guns and violent offenders, with the goal of amassing arrest numbers, while sometimes using force against unarmed people.

Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to the federal charges under deals with prosecutors. The other three officers were convicted in early October of witness tampering related to the cover-up of the beating. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of using excessive force and being indifferent to Nichols’ serious injuries.

Haley was acquitted of violating Nichols’ civil rights causing death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights causing bodily injury. The five men face sentencing by a federal judge in the coming months.

Martin and Mills also are expected to change their not guilty pleas in state court, according to lawyers involved in the case. Bean, Haley and Smith have also pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder. A trial in the state case has been set for April 28.

Justice Department investigators have targeted other cities with similar probes in recent years.

On Nov. 21, the department said police in New Jersey’s capital of Trenton have shown a pattern of misconduct, including using excessive force and making unlawful stops. The DOJ’s report documented arrests without legal basis, officers escalating situations with aggression and unnecessary use of pepper spray.

In June 2023, another Justice Department probe alleged that Minneapolis police systematically discriminated against racial minorities, violated constitutional rights and disregarded the safety of people in custody for years before George Floyd was killed.

In March 2023, the department found police in Louisville, Kentucky, engaged in a pattern of violating constitutional rights and discrimination against the Black community following an investigation prompted by the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

In its letter, the city of Memphis said the DOJ’s investigation “only took 17 months to complete, compared to an average of 2-3 years in almost every other instance, implying a rush to judgment.”

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

MIAMI (AP) — One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cocaine cartel has been released from a federal prison in the U.S. and is expected to be deported back home.

Records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons show that Fabio Ochoa-Vasquez was released Tuesday after completing 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence.

Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to U.S. authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires. Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar.

Although somewhat faded from memory as the center of the drug trade shifted from Colombia to Mexico, he resurfaced in the hit Netflix series “Narcos” true to form as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family into ranching and horse breeding that cut a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.

Ochoa was first indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal — whose life was popularized in in the 2017 film “American Made” starring Tom Cruise.

He was initially arrested in 1990 in Colombia under a government program promising drug kingpins would not be extradited to the U.S. At the time, he was on the U.S. list of the “Dozen Most Wanted” Colombia drug lords.

Ochoa was arrested again and extradited to the U.S. in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy. Of those, Ochoa was the only one who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and the 30-year sentence. The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.

Richard Gregorie, a retired Assistant U.S. Attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that Ochoa will have a welcome return home.

“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press.

Richard Klugh, a Miami-based attorney for Ochoa, declined to comment.

But in years of litigation, he argued unsuccessfully that his client deserved to be released early because his sentence far exceeded what was appropriate for the amount of seized cocaine that authorities could attribute to Ochoa.

A St. Paul man has been sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for stealing from a woman and robbing two others at gunpoint — making one drive from Arden Hills to Minneapolis — on three days in 2022.

Raphael Raymond Nunn, 58, was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after a jury in May found him guilty of kidnapping, bank fraud and identity theft.

Raphael Raymond Nunn (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Prosecutors asked Judge Eric Tostrud to give Nunn a 27-year sentence, calling Nunn a “relentless offender” and “life-long fraudster whose calculated deceit has left a wake of financial devastation spanning nearly three decades.”

Minnesota court records show that Nunn has three convictions for auto theft, two for check forgery and one for financial transaction card fraud.

According to federal court documents:

Nunn was wearing a mask and gloves and armed with a black handgun when he approached a 61-year-old woman who had just parked her 2003 Lexus in an underground parking garage at her work in the 3900 block of Northwood Drive in Arden Hills just before 7:30 a.m. Sept. 13, 2022.

When the woman got out of her car, Nunn approached her with the gun. After the woman grabbed the barrel of the gun, he pushed her to the ground and then forced her back into the vehicle at gunpoint.

He ordered her to drive to an ATM at Wells Fargo at 2600 E. Franklin in Minneapolis. There, he forced her to withdraw cash using her debit card until she reached her limit of $1,000. He then forced her to call her bank and get a PIN number to withdraw cash from her credit card. He also took $30 from her wallet. He then ordered her to drive to Matthews Park at 2438 27th Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Once at the park, he told her to get out of the vehicle and leave her key fob and phone in the car. He told her she could find her vehicle at the other side of the park after he was gone. When the woman walked to her vehicle, he was gone and she called the police.

Video surveillance cameras showed Nunn getting out of her car and walking to Cedar Food & Grill at 2600 Cedar Ave. in Minneapolis. Once inside the store, he bought a bottle of soda and took off his hood. He was no longer wearing the mask, which he had discarded during his walk. Four days later he returned to the store in his own vehicle, which allowed authorities to identify him as the suspect.

He was arrested Sept. 22, 2022, in Minneapolis. A search found evidence of the kidnapping and two previous crimes that year.

Law enforcement linked Nunn to the robbery of a woman in a Target parking lot in Hudson, Wis., on Jan. 8. Using a black handgun, Nunn threatened to kill the woman if she refused to hand over her purse. He then used her bank cards to make several purchases in St. Paul, totaling about $180.

Nunn also was tied to the theft of a woman’s backpack, which included her debit card, at Twin Cities Orthopedics in Oak Park Heights on Aug. 9. He then used the card to make $430 in fraudulent transactions in Lake Elmo and Oak Park Park Heights.

“Nunn inflicted not just financial losses, but emotional and psychological scars, as his victims were left with a lasting sense of vulnerability and fear,” federal prosecutors wrote in a document to the judge. “His pattern of criminal behavior demonstrates a lack of empathy, exemplifying the very reasons our justice system categorizes his actions as serious offenses requiring decisive punishment.”

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