TYRE NICHOLS’S family and friends came together for his funeral on Wednesday, combining a celebration of his life with outraged calls for police reform after the brutal beating he suffered at the hands of officers in Memphis.

Mr Nichols’s mother RowVaughn Wells fought back tears as she spoke lovingly of her son.

“The only thing that’s keeping me going is that I truly believe that my son was sent here on assignment from God,” she said. “And I guess now his assignment is done. He’s gone home.”

Veteran civil rights activist Al Sharpton and US Vice-President Kamala Harris both delivered impassioned speeches calling on Congress to approve the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a broad package of reforms that includes a national registry for police officers disciplined for misconduct and a ban on no-knock warrants.

Regarding the police officers’ assault on Mr Nichols, Ms Harris said: “It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe, because one must ask, was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us today?

“Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe? So when we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form. Tyre Nichols should have been safe.”

Mr Nichols was beaten by police after they stopped him for an alleged traffic offence on January 7.

Police video of the incident shows officers holding Mr Nichols down and repeatedly punching, kicking and striking him with a baton as he screamed for his mother.

Mr Sharpton said that, early on Wednesday, he had visited the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where civil right icon Martin Luther King Jnr was shot dead on April 4 1968.

He noted that Dr King was in the city to support a strike by sanitation workers, most of whom were black.

“The reason why … what happened to Tyre is so personal to me is that five black men that wouldn’t have had a job in the police department, would not ever be thought of to be in an elite squad, in the city that Dr King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death,” Mr Sharpton said.

In the three weeks since Mr Nichols’s death, five police officers have been sacked and charged with murder and their specialised unit has been disbanded. Two other officers have been suspended.

Two Memphis Fire Department emergency medical workers and a lieutenant have also been dismissed over their alleged roles in the incident.