Memphis police chief CJ Davis has been praised for her handling of Tyre Nichols' death. But critics say she's protected bad cops and empowered elite units that became abusive.

• Memphis police chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis swiftly fired the police officers who beat Tyre Nichols.
• For years, Davis has positioned herself as a champion of police reform.

Memphis police chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis — widely praised for taking swift action against the five officers who beat Tyre Nichols — has for years positioned herself as a champion of police reform.

In 2020, as chief of the Durham Police Department in North Carolina, she testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on the use of force by police, condemning the murder of George Floyd and addressing the "systemic shortcomings and oftentimes failures of our law-enforcement and criminal-justice systems."

That same year, she appeared on national news outlets like ABC's "Good Morning America" as an expert on police reform.

"If your idea of a police chief is a gruff, cigar-chomping tough guy, then you need to meet C.J. Davis," Megyn Kelly said in 2017.

Last month, Davis denounced her own Memphis officers after footage surfaced of them beating 29-year-old Nichols, who died three days later. Soon after, she fired five officers who were later charged with Nichols' murder.

Nichols' family praised her response, and the renowned civil-rights attorney Ben Crump called her actions a "blueprint" for justice.

But those who've watched the arc of Davis' law-enforcement career from police departments in Atlanta to Durham to Memphis say she has protected bad cops and empowered elite units that became abusive.

When the Memphis Police Department later revealed that a white police officer involved in the incident had been put on paid leave, Crump suggested the department had "shielded and protected" him.

Some wonder if Davis is truly interested in police reform.

"She's presented herself as very polished and diplomatic in her presentation, but that doesn't change the substance of the philosophy that she uses," said Earle Fisher, a Memphis-based pastor who's campaigned against police brutality for more than a decade.

Davis and the Memphis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Davis created, then disbanded, the Scorpion Unit

The officers who beat Nichols were part of an elite police group called the Scorpion Unit, an acronym for the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods Unit. The group consisted of about 50 officers who patrolled known hot spots for crime and suspected gang activity.

Davis founded the unit and had praised it for removing hundreds of illegal guns from the street and making thousands of felony arrests.

On January 27, Nichols' family attorneys publicly called for Scorpion's dissolution, and a day later, Davis complied.

Davis had to have known that an elite police unit like Scorpion would empower officers in the group to "break the law, use excessive force, and feel that they can act with impunity," said the Atlanta-based attorney Dan Grossman, who represented plaintiffs affected by police brutality while Davis rose up the ranks in the Atlanta Police Department.

Grossman successfully represented several plaintiffs who said they had been assaulted by officers who were part of Atlanta's Red Dog unit, which Davis oversaw from 2006 to 2007, according to a copy of her résumé made available by the Durham government.

Red Dog was formed with the goal of targeting street crimes and drug use. The unit was the subject of a series of lawsuits and later disbanded.

One lawsuit, filed by Grossman in 2009, alleged that Atlanta officers, some of whom were part of the Red Dog unit, stormed a gay bar undercover and "began screaming at patrons and employees to 'hit the floor' and get down on the ground."

"Police officers shoved some of the patrons ... to the ground and pressed their boots" into their backs, the lawsuit says. Some of the bargoers were lying on the floor with spilled beer and broken glass, according to the lawsuit.

Like the Scorpion unit, Red Dog was a specialized police unit that provided aggressive police presence in high-crime areas, Grossman said.

She "saw, observed, knew what happens when you create a unit like Red Dog," Grossman said.

The Memphis Police Department did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.

Fired, then rehired

Davis was fired from the Atlanta Police Department in July 2008, according to a document from the Atlanta Civil Service Board, an all-citizen group designed to address issues brought up by city employees, ranging from acts of retaliation to firings.

The firing followed an investigation into a sex crime involving children and an Atlanta police sergeant's husband, according to the CBS affiliate WREG.

Another officer came across dozens of sexually explicit photos featuring girls aged 12 to 15 posing with the sergeant's husband, WREG reported. These girls, WREG said, had been paid by the husband.

The officers passed on those photos to senior leadership at the Atlanta Police Department, and the FBI investigated the case.

Two detectives said they informed Davis, the unit commander at the time, of the existence of the photos, and she indicated to them that they should stop investigating.

"Cut it," she told them, per WREG.

When she was interviewed as part of the investigation, a computer voice-stress analyzer detected "deception" in her voice, according to WREG.

Davis was fired, but she successfully appealed the termination and was reinstated to the same position three months later. She stayed in Atlanta for eight more years, rising the ranks and to eventually become deputy chief.

In 2016, she was hired as the Durham police chief. When she stepped into the role, the city had been facing mounting criticism because of increasing crime rates and a lack of trust in the police, wrote Derek A. Epp, Frank Baumgartner, and Kelsey Shoub, the authors of a 2018 book analyzing every traffic stop in North Carolina over a 14-year period.

Davis was brought in and instructed to "rebuild trust in the community," they wrote.

During her tenure, she implemented a series of changes to the way police officers interact with citizens, including requiring body cameras and changing the mandate from arrest to citation for some marijuana offenses. She also made a big push against gangs in 2020, after reports of gun violence rose sharply.

From Durham to Memphis

When she took over the Memphis Police Department in 2021, organizers and activists were skeptical.

Fisher pointed out that Davis was handpicked by Memphis' mayor, Jim Strickland, a Democrat who vowed during his mayoral campaign to expand the police force. Strickland's office did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.

"He's been hell-bent for the last eight years on hiring more police officers and trying to maneuver around many other reforms that activists and organizers and everyday people have been on the ground requesting," Fisher said. "So I didn't think that she would be some progressive reformer. I thought that she would probably be somebody who would help to execute that framework and philosophy and strategy."

While Fisher may have had his doubts about Davis, the pastor fears she might become a scapegoat for systemic issues that plague law enforcement in the city and the country as a whole.

"If we aren't careful, she'll be isolated as the fall girl," Fisher said, adding that the real issue is redefining the country's expectations for public safety.