The Memphis Police Department Saturday announced that it has “permanently deactivated” its SCORPION unit, one day after the release of shocking video which showed the violent arrest of Tyre Nichols earlier this month. All five former officers involved in Nichols’ arrest, who have since been charged with second-degree murder in his death, were part of that unit.
The decision came after Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis met with members of the unit Saturday “to discuss the path forward for the department and the community in the aftermath of the tragic death of Tyre Nichols,” police said in a statement.
Officials came to the conclusion that it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit,” the statement read.
SCORPION officers agreed “unreservedly” with the decision, the department added.
The SCORPION unit had been inactive since the Jan. 7 arrest of Nichols, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland had said in a news bulletin Friday.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Memphis, Tennessee, on Jan. 27, 2023.
Gerald Herbert / AP
SCORPION, or Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods, included more than two dozen officers tasked with taking on street crime. They wore black hoodies and tactical black vests with “POLICE” emblazoned across the front and back, and drove dark colored Dodge Chargers marked with a SCORPION seal.
They patrolled in groups and at times used low-level traffic stops as a way to find violent criminals, drugs or weapons, according to the department.
“While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted,” Saturday’s statement read.
The 29-year-old Nichols died on Jan. 10, three days after being violently arrested during a traffic stop by Memphis police officers. Bodycam and surveillance video released Friday showed Nichols being pepper sprayed, kicked in the head while being restrained, punched and struck multiple times with a baton.
The five former officers, who have since been fired, have been identified as Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith. They were hired from 2017 to 2020, and were 24 to 32 years old. All five officers have been charged with murder and other crimes.
In his news bulletin Friday, Strickland also wrote said that the city was “initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units.”
— Pat Milton and Chrissy Hallowell contributed to this report.
A former veteran Memphis city police officer who knew those involved in Tyre Nichols’ violent arrest spoke to CBS News about one of the five ex-officers charged in the case, and the so-called SCORPION unit those five were members of.
He described the “proactive” approach of the ex-officer as someone who thought, if you didn’t go after the bad guys aggressively you were not doing your job as a police officer.
“I never thought this would happen,” the former officer told CBS News. The former officer, who recently left the department after 10 years, spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
He said he knew each of the charged ex-officers and worked closely at times with one of them, Demetrius Haley. The five were fired from their jobs and are facing charges of second-degree murder for the brutal beating of Nichols after a Jan. 7 traffic stop.
Morale is very low at the Memphis Police Department right now, according to the former officer.
“This is not an indication of who the department is,” he said. “We deal with very bad people. There are fights and foot chases but we all have an understanding when it’s time to stop.”
Tyre Nichols was arrested after Haley and and the four other officers — Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — stopped him for reckless driving. Video from the scene, released by the city on Friday, shows Nichols was severely beaten. He died three days later in the hospital.
The Director of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation David Rausch said he was “sickened” and “shocked,” by the video footage he viewed of the beating. “Let me be clear: what happened here does not at all reflect proper policing. This was wrong. This was criminal.”
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy joined Rausch at the news conference Thursday to announce the charges against the five fired officers.
“We want justice for Tyre Nichols,” Mulroy said. “…The world is watching us and we need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy.”
In the interview with CBS News, the former Memphis police officer described 30-year-old Haley as “a young, athletic, confident guy.”
But he said Haley did butt heads with others in the department for, in Haley’s view, their not being aggressive enough in pursuing criminals.
CBS News is attempting to reach a representative of Haley’s for comment.
Haley, a former Shelby County Corrections Officer, was a member of the hand-picked SCORPION team, a specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime.
The name SCORPION stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. There are more than two dozen officers assigned to SCORPION teams. They wear black hoodies and tactical black vests with “POLICE” emblazoned across the front and back, and drive dark colored Dodge Chargers marked with a SCORPION seal.
The crime-suppression teams patrol in groups and at times use justified low-level traffic stops as a way to find violent criminals, drugs or weapons.
“You have to be a go-getter, for the most part,” to join the SCORPION unit, the former officer told CBS News. “You have to be someone who wants to make a difference, who wants to catch the bad guy.”
In a news bulletin published on Jan. 27, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said, “Since this event happened, the SCORPION Unit has been and remains inactive,” though he didn’t clarify when the unit was deactivated. Strickland also said that the city is “initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units.”
Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN that investigators “have not been able to substantiate” the initial report of reckless driving that prompted Nichols’ arrest. And Nichols family attorney Antonio Romanucci questioned the justification for the stop, saying on CNN, “we know that the saturation and suppression units do use pretext to stop in order to carry out this … wolf pack mentality of policing.”
The former Memphis officer who spoke with CBS News said with a large number of officers retiring from the department, younger, less experienced members of the department were being tapped for the specialized SCORPION teams. They were not well-trained and not properly managed, he said, describing the training as consisting of three days of PowerPoint presentations, one day of criminal apprehension instruction and one day at the firing range.
The Memphis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The officers charged in Nichols’ death were hired from 2017 to 2020. They were 24 to 32 years old.
“You have to have crime suppression units,” the former officer said. “You can’t get crime down by only showing up at schools and talking to the kids and putting up posters.”
He stressed that the department is made up of truly dedicated officers committed to their mission, committed to helping people.
“They still have to go out each day and get to work. They still have to fight crime.”
Boy, here are some God of War Ragnarök tips. And yes, it’s very good and delivers a satisfying conclusion for this new era of the franchise.
02:39
The Week In Games: Gold Rings And Ragnarök
Monday 6:24PM
So, knowing that and after all the hype, you are likely excited to just jump right in and get going with Kratos and friends. But before you start playing Ragnarök, here are some tips to consider from me, someone who has played over 40 hours of it. And don’t worry, there are no major spoilers below.
You Can Pause Cutscenes
A simple tip, but good to know because some of the cutscenes in Ragnarök are very long. You might need a bathroom break!
Set “Swipe Up” To Quickly See Where To Go
The PS5 and PS4 controllers have touchpads. While these are used by most games as little more than giant buttons, God of War lets you assign certain actions to swipes. Personally, setting it to point the camera in the direction of my current objective was the only useful action I found in the game. Technically, you can do the same thing with a button press, but this is quicker and easier.
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Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku
Pre-Ice Your Axe Before Fights
One of the first things you learn about is the ability to “charge” up your Levithan axe with ice, and it’s a great thing to do for the rest of the game. Anytime you get a chance to hold triangle to “ice up” your axe, do it! You’ll do more damage and gain access to special attacks. Later on, grab the upgrade that lets you ice up your axe while sprinting, too.
Save Health Drops For Later
During fights, an enemy will sometimes drop a health pick up. While you might be tempted to smash these right away to refill your HP, hold on! Leaving them around can save you during ambushes or bigger fights. Wait to pop these when you either know the area is completely clear or you are very, very low on health and need the boost. Early on, your HP will be low so managing these drops effectively can help you survive tough encounters.
Try Out The Dwarf Armor Set, Nidavellir
Not too far into the game, you’ll encounter a side quest involving mining rigs and the dwarves. Take a detour and finish up this questline as it will give you the materials needed to create the Nidavellir set of armor. This armor has a great bonus, whenever you execute a stunned enemy using R3, the armor provides a burst of health. Very useful in the early game!
Don’t Forget To Block And Counter
It’s easy to focus only on swinging your cool axe and chain blades because they’re so cool and make enemies go “SPLAT” or “BOOM” when used correctly. But wait! Don’t forget to block and dodge. Later enemies and harder bosses will demand you block and dodge attacks, so start practicing early on. (And remember, you can’t block attacks that are marked by red circles!)
Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku
Use Atreus To Locate Missing Enemies
Sometimes you might kill what you think is the last enemy, but the combat music keeps playing and you can’t access any loot. This isn’t a bug, but instead, there’s likely a lone enemy hanging around somewhere. A quick way to find it is to press square and use Atreus’ bow attack to find it as he will fire the bow in the direction of the baddie.
Get Aggressive Skills For Atreus
Speaking of Atreus, when upgrading his skills, focus on the ones that make him more aggressive and give him more ways to stun, damage, and counter enemies. This will make him far more useful in fights.
Take Advantage Of The Blades Grapple When You Unlock It
Early on, you’ll be able to unlock an ability for your Blades of Chaos called “Hyperion Grapple.” Once unlocked, aim your blades at an enemy and hold R1. Kratos will zip across the battlefield and slam into the bad guy or monster via the blades chains. This will deal a lot of stun damage, which is useful as it will often let you execute the enemy.
You can even buff it to do more stun damage, making it a very powerful move to take down big enemies or clean out tiny ones as it has no cooldown.
Need To Stun Something? Punch It!
While your axe and blades are amazing and very powerful, don’t forget that Kratos has some beefy fists that can be useful in a fight. That’s because his fists do more stun damage, filling up that stun meter below enemies HP bar.
In fact, some enemies, like the armor-covered Travelers, are better to punch than slash, because once stunned you are able to rip off their armor and make them more vulnerable to other attacks. Fast and annoying creatures can also be stunned and put in their place with Dad of War’s fists of fury.
Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku
Love The Spear. Worship The Spear. Upgrade It Too!
Fairly late in the game, you will gain access to a new weapon: a magical spear. I won’t spoil how you get it or why, but it’s very cool and useful. What makes this spear powerful is that you can throw magical copies of it forever, giving Kratos a powerful ranged weapon. And the spears can impale enemies, which Kratos can later make explode when you hold triangle. All of this is good and you should try to upgrade it ASAP once you unlock it.
Those Air Vents You See? Ignore Them Until You Get The Spear
The spear isn’t just a great weapon, it helps solve later-game puzzles, too! All those small air vents you see in the various realms? Those can’t be used until you get the spear. Come back with it to solve those puzzles.
Same Goes For The Glowing Yellow Cracks
Yeah, those need the spear, too.
Keep An Eye Out For Chests
They can be hidden in many places and are very important. Each of these will give you more resources and hacksilver, letting you upgrade all your god killin’ gear. Keep a special eye out for Nornir chests which are dark blue and locked behind runes. You’ll need to solve a little puzzle to open these, but they award health and rage upgrades!
Sell Armor And Weapons You Don’t Use
Having more hacksilver and crafting resources is useful early on as you start the game with basically nothing. So, feel free to sell any armor or weapons you find that you don’t want. And don’t worry, if in a few hours you feel like you made a mistake, you can always re-craft that stuff later.
But trust me, you’ll quickly find a few pieces of gear you love, and everything else can and should be sold to help boost the stuff you are actually using.
Oh, And Sell All The Artifacts, Too
After you find books or other collectibles, you can sell them to blacksmiths. And you don’t get punished for doing so. In fact, the game even tells you this at one point. So sell that stuff too!
Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku
Make Sure To Use Your XP To Get New Skills
In all the chaos of killing and looting, you might forget to take a moment to level up your skills and unlock new ones. So, make a habit of always checking your skills whenever you see a blacksmith, beat a boss, or after a cutscene. These happen frequently enough that you shouldn’t go too long without upgrading Kratos.
Also, Upgrade Your Rune Attacks And Abilities
There’s a lot of shit to upgrade in this game. (In fact, there’s probably too much stuff to tinker with, really.) Another thing to upgrade are your weapons, which can each be equipped with two runes. Upgrading these runes can improve the already powerful special attacks in some great ways.
Oh, Also, Also Upgrade Your Skills Once You’ve Completed The Associated Challenge
Wait, there’s more shit to upgrade. Over the course of the game, you’ll complete challenges that connect to different skills. Once you’ve fully completed all levels of a challenge, you are able to upgrade that associated skill. For example, the fantastic Hyperion Pull ability I mentioned earlier can be tweaked, after you’ve used it enough times, to do even more stun damage.
Pick One Or Two Stats You Care About And Focus On That
Okay, so all that upgrading and armor management and skill tweaking might seem messy and hard to follow. And it sort of is! But luckily, you can also mostly ignore it all and just pick out two stats you care most about.
So if, like me, you just want to do lots of damage and have tons of health, just focus on gear that increases your vitality and strength. I did this and made it easily to the end of the game as a god-killin’ machine.
Screenshot: Santa Monica Studio / Sony / Kotaku
Use Hex Arrows To Freeze Things Without The Axe Being Embedded
See something that you need frozen? Throw your axe at it. Simple. But what if there are two things? Well don’t forget you can have companions fire hex arrows at something, like a large gear connected to a door, and when you freeze that, the gear will remain frozen even after you recall the axe. This will let you freeze two different things at once!
On PS5? Play At 120 FPS If Your TV Allows It
If you are lucky enough to own a PS5, then take advantage of Ragnarök’s suite of visual options. Specifically, if you have a TV setup that allows it, play the game at 120fps. Seriously. It’s amazing and makes me unable to go back to 60fps or…shudders…30fps.
To turn on 120fps, hop into the visual settings and select “Performance Mode” and then turn on “High Frame Rate Mode.” Voila! You too can kill gods at a silky smooth 120 frames per second.
You Can Keep Playing Once The Credits Roll (And You Should)
I won’t spoil how God of War does this, what it means for the story or how it works with the other characters in the game. But yes, you can keep playing and finish up side quests you didn’t complete before wrapping up the main story.
And you should keep playing once the game “ends” because there are some fun moments and conversations to be found out there once all is said and done.
This illustration shows what the sea scorpion, a meter-long monster, might have looked like.
Queensland Museum/Alison Douglas
Sea scorpions don’t exist anymore, a fact you might be grateful to learn since land scorpions don’t have a friendly reputation. Researchers investigated a fossil that had been kicking around for years at the Queensland Museum in Australia and found it belongs to an intimidating group of predators that are long extinct.
In a statement on Friday, the museum described the sea scorpion as a “massive monster” that likely topped 3 feet (1 meter) in length. It lived in lakes or rivers around what is now the Australian town of Theodore. It’s the first sea scorpion fossil to be identified in Queensland.
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We’ve met some other sea scorpion fossils before, notably a dog-sized species discovered near China. Sea scorpions are more formally known as eurypterids. The new one is now called Woodwardopterus freemanorum.
The Woodwardopterus freemanorum fossil and an illustration of the fossil.
Queensland Museum
The fossil was originally discovered in the 1990s and first examined by the museum in 2013. COVID lockdowns gave Andrew Rozefelds, Queensland Museum’s geosciences principal curator, a chance to revisit the as-yet-unidentified “cold case” creature.
“When the fragmentary specimen came into our collection, it was initially placed in the ‘too-hard basket’ but the closures provided the opportunity to study and reassess some of our fossil collection and this particular fossil had always intrigued me,” Rozefelds said. Rozefelds is co-author of a paper on the sea scorpion published in the journal Historical Biology.
Rozefelds and lead author Markus Poschmann, a eurypterid expert, dated the fossil to 252 million years ago. This was around the time sea scorpions disappeared, making Woodwardopterus freemanorum one of the last known of its kind. “This new tantalizing fossil helps fill the gap in our knowledge of this group of animals in Australia, and indeed world-wide,” Rozefelds said.
Sea scorpions are relatives of modern scorpions and other arachnids. The one found in Theodore would have been a top predator in its day, but that’s not something we modern humans have to worry about tangling with. Whew.
Figures showing the fossils found and a drawing of what this monster scorpion looked like.
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology/Chinese Academy of Sciences
Picture a little monster scorpion with its characteristic prickly pincers and creepy curled stinger. Now, enlarge that image until the venomous insect is over 3 feet (about a meter) long. Scientists found fossil remains of just such a creature from over 400 million years ago on China’s seafloor.
Dubbed Terropterus xiushanensis, the giant swimming beast is a part of the family Mixopteridae, a class of large, scorpion-esque beings that boast spiny appendages decorated with needle-like spikes and tails reminiscent of a serrated knife.
“These limbs were presumably used for prey capture, and analogies can be drawn with the ‘catching basket’ formed by the spiny pedipalps of whip spiders,” the study authors wrote in a paper on the find that will be published in the November issue of the journal Science Bulletin.
“Our knowledge of these bizarre animals is limited to only four species in two genera described 80 years ago,” the international group of researchers say in the study. Those relatives of the threatening insect were found around Scotland, New York, Norway and Estonia.
But this giant version of the blood-curdling arachnid, the paper states, is the first of its kind to be discovered near the region of southern China and is the oldest known member of the fearsome Mixopteridae clan. In ancient times, during the Early Silurian period between 443.8 million years ago and 419.2 million years ago, the area was known as Gondwana.
The new fossils could further our understanding of these vicious sea dwellers’ diversity and reach.
“Bearing such large spiny legs and probably a poisonous telson to catch and strike the prey,” the researchers write, “Terropterus is likely to have played an important role of top predators in the marine ecosystem during the Early Silurian when there were no large vertebrate competitors in South China.”
As the fossils revealed varying patterns of spines and spikes on the creature, the researchers also suspect the unusually large scorpion had a few different strategies for hunting down dinner. But eventually, when sharks and other more modern predators came into play, these husky scorpions no longer ruled the Chinese sea and were presumably forced out of existence. Phew.
A 3.3 foot-long (1 meter) sea scorpion prowled the seas of what is now China some 435 million years ago, using its giant, spiny arms to ensnare prey.
Archaeologists recently discovered the remains of this scorpion (Terropterus xiushanensis), which was a eurypterid — an ancient arthropod closely related to modern arachnids and horseshoe crabs, the researchers wrote in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Science Bulletin.
Related: See images of a primordial sea scorpion
Its barbed limbs “were presumably used for prey-capture, and analogies can be drawn with the ‘catching basket’ formed by the spiny pedipalps of whip spiders … among the arachnids,” study co-author Bo Wang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues wrote in the new study. Pedipalps are the front-most appendages of arachnids. Usually dedicated to transferring sperm from male spiders to female mates, in some arachnids, such as whip spiders, pedipalps have become adapted to snatch prey.
The fossilized appendages of the sea scorpion, accompanied by an artist’s recreation. (Image credit: Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
The fearsome beastie lived during the Silurian period, between approximately 443.8 million and 419.2 million years ago. At this time, the scorpions would have been the apex predators in their underwater stalking grounds, pouncing on unsuspecting fish and mollusks; scooping them up in their pedipalps; and shoving them into their mouths.
Eurypterids came in many sizes, with the smallest about the size of a human hand and the largest as big as an adult human, Live Science previously reported. The newly described species, T. xiushanensis, is the first discovered belonging to the family Mixopteriade in 80 years, the researchers say.
“Our knowledge of these bizarre animals is limited to only four species in two genera described 80 years ago: Mixopterus kiaeri from Norway, Mixopterus multispinosus from New York, Mixopterus simonsoni from Estonia and Lanarkopterus dolichoschelus from Scotland,” Wang and colleagues wrote in the study.
T. xiushanensis is also the first mixtopterid to be discovered in what would have been the supercontinent of Gondwana, which formed after the larger supercontinent Pangaea cracked in two.
“Our first Gondwanan mixopterid — along with other eurypterids from China and some undescribed specimens — suggests an under-collecting bias in this group,” the researchers wrote in their study. “Future work, especially in Asia, may reveal a more cosmopolitan distribution of mixopterids and perhaps other groups of eurypterids.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that every move and every system you’ve ever enjoyed in a video game has been planned to the last meticulous detail. But hey, sometimes a thought just comes to you, and the results stand the test of time.
Here, for example, is a wonderful old video that’s been dug out of the archives by Mortal Kombat co–creator Ed Boon, ahead of the series’ 30th anniversary next year. It shows a ton of behind-the-scenes footage from the original game’s creation—the kind of stuff Boon has posted on Twitter before—but in this case it goes beyond just looking at the actors and shows some on-the-fly development in action.
This is wild. Scorpion’s spear throw, one of the most iconic moves in fighting game history, was just…thought up on the spot, with actor Daniel Pesina right there, ready to workshop the whole thing live. Boon elaborates on the footage in some follow-up tweets, explaining stuff like how important it was that the actor limit the number of frames used to capture the move, and how parts of the throw ended up using “recycled” animations.
We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming. With Scorpion’s spear, it started with “You know what would be a cool ass move?”. From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details.
One of those details was how fast Scorpion threw the spear, which had to be quick so he could catch opponents by surprise. This meant keeping the animation simple & very few frames. We also wanted the spear to pass over a ducking opponent, so we kept it at chest height.
We were so tight on memory, that we didn’t even capture any motions for the victim reactions. Instead we borrowed from their existing animation frames. You can hear us talk about reusing one of the victim’s “knockdown” animations when they initially get hit by the spear.
We also borrowed the victim’s “fatality dizzy” frames to show they were stunned after being pulled in. Reusing existing animations was one of the many tricks we used to save memory, which was so much more limited in 1991.
A few things make me laugh watching this so many years later. Try counting how many times you see my arm reach out from the right side, trying to (ninja) mime the move. Also hearing @therealsaibot describe how he wants to make the rope like a snake by saying “shh shh”.
Also… did you notice how young Ed Boon really likes to use the word “WAH” to describe things? WTF?
Finally, while there was SO MUCH more involved with us creating this classic move (fx, sounds) it’s still kool to see the germ of an idea that eventually became so synonymous with Mortal Kombat, and duplicated SO MANY TIMES in future games, movies, tv, animation & comics!
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I know “eureka” moments must happen all the time, maybe even just like this, but fans getting to see them in action so many years later is just very, very cool.