NAACP demands end of Trump’s anticrime taskforce in Memphis after deaths of Black men

Advocacy group calls on acting attorney general to lead ‘thorough, transparent federal investigation’

The deaths in recent days of two Black men in Tennessee, one in the custody of police and the other at the hands of national guard troops, has prompted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to demand the suspension of the so-called Memphis Safe Task Force, Donald Trump’s anti-crime alliance of federal, state and local law enforcement.

In a letter to acting attorney general Todd Blanche on Friday, the NAACP also demanded “a thorough, transparent federal investigation” into the actions of the taskforce, which it said has surged federal and military officers into Memphis with insufficient training for civilian policing.