Scorpions in the Grass

Premier journalist for The Trace Josiah Bates tells the intimate story of a police killing that riled the nation, uncovering along the way the sinister, city-to-city spread of elite police forces that have devastated Black and Brown neighborhoods.

On January 7, 2023, twenty-nine-year-old Tyre Nichols was severely beaten by police during a traffic stop. The five officers involved were part of Memphis’s now-disbanded Scorpion unit, a specialized task force formed to combat violent crime and car thefts—supposedly to keep the community safe. But three days later, Tyre died of his injuries, and amid nationwide calls for police reform, one question in particular arose: Just who are these units meant to protect?

Told in its entirety for the first time, with rigorous on-the-ground reporting and heartbreaking testimony from family and friends, Nichols’s story cracks open the history of elite policing, starting in 1970s Detroit, and moving through major cities like New York City and Atlanta, Los Angeles and Portland, where officer-involved murders of unarmed Black teenagers went ignored as the war on drugs raged. Usually dressed in plain clothes and waiting in unmarked cars, these officers would bait and profile civilians with little to no oversight, rarely facing consequences. 

Nichols’s murder was not just one unfortunate error, Bates argues, but the latest casualty of an escalating strategy of policing that has dangerously transformed the way American cities are patrolled—and paved the way for the violence and impunity with which other government agencies like ICE now operate. 

• "An intimate portrait of Tyre Nichols's life and death alongside a propulsive telling of the rise of anti-crime 'elite' police units across the country, and their bull-in-a-china-shop approach to public safety. Bates's nuanced telling of the push and pull of local and national police reform politics illuminates a little-known but critically important part of the story."
  Joanna Schwartz, professor of law and author of Shielded
• “Scorpions in the Grass by Josiah Bates is a feat of journalism and humanity. Bates delivers a story that will horrify: how police task forces with names like REDRUM and SCORPIONS have risen in communities across the U.S. with devastating and deadly consequences for untold numbers of Americans. At its core, it’s an urgent and engrossing narrative that keeps your jaw on the floor. It’s a story about what has happened—and continues to happen—when bands of cops meant to stamp out crime start to look like criminals themselves. With incisive observations drawn from rich interviews, this landmark book exposes in powerful detail how it’s not just bad apples spoiling these bunches—it’s bad ideas. Scorpions in the Grass is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what policing in this country so-often really looks like: shadowy bands of accountability-free cops hunting the streets for people to target for searches, interrogations, and violence.”
  Joshua Sharpe, journalist and author of The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders
• “Josiah Bates exposes what I’ve seen from both sides of the courtroom: when a police unit answers to no one, the community pays in blood. Scorpions in the Grass is essential reading for anyone who believes accountability is not optional.”
  Jarrett Adams, exoneree, civil rights attorney, and author of Redeeming Justice