Memphis disbands police unit after fatal beating as protesters take to streets - Reuters.com

That request was largely heeded on Friday when scattered protests broke out in Memphis - where marchers briefly blocked an interstate highway - and elsewhere.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in New York's Washington Square Park before marching through Manhattan, as columns of police officers walked alongside them.

"He liked what he liked, and he marched to the beat of his own drum," Spates said, remembering that Nichols would go to a park called Shelby Farms to watch the sunset when he wasn't working a late shift.

The 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, galvanized worldwide protests over racial injustice.

Reporting by Maria Cardona in Memphis, Tennessee, and Diane Bartz in Washington; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Robert Birsel

Diane Bartz Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.