Look at what they’re doing now: Soon after Tyre Nichols’s brutal killing by Memphis police officers in January, the chairman of the city’s civilian review board, James Kirkwood, appealed to the city council to strengthen its oversight of police. “If you slap someone on the wrist for something they’ve done wrong, then covered it up and left it alone, they’re going to do it again,” Kirkwood, a pastor and former police officer, told the council, requesting more money, more staff, and more power to conduct independent investigations. Instead, what little power the board did have may soon vanish, as the Tennessee legislature draws closer to gutting civilian oversight over police in Memphis and other cities in the state. Introduced in late January by GOP lawmakers, just weeks after Nichols’s death, Senate Bill 591 and House Bill 764 would dissolve community-led oversight boards in Memphis and Nashville, ending their ongoing investigations by the close of July and precluding the possibility of other cities establishing boards with similar powers. “This bill essentially strips away police accountability in our state, at the height of a police killing that was so tragic and brutal,” said Jill Fitcheard, the director of Nashville’s Civilian Oversight Board. “These state legislators want to cut away oversight and police accountability and dwindle it down until it’s nothing.” The Republican legislature’s latest assault on Memphis and Nashville, the state’s two most populous cities, comes just weeks after its headline-grabbing expulsion of two young Black lawmakers, Memphis’s Justin Pearson and Nashville’s Justin Jones, for leading…