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Grand jury declines to indict police officer in fatal shooting of 12yr old Tamir Rice

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K

Kid Kamikaze10

Member
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A white Cleveland police officer was justified in fatally shooting a black 12-year-old boy holding a pellet gun moments after pulling up beside him, according to two outside reviews conducted at the request of the prosecutor investigating the death.

A retired FBI agent and a Denver prosecutor both found the rookie patrolman who shot Tamir Rice exercised a reasonable use of force because he had reason to perceive the boy — described in a 911 call as man waving and pointing a gun — as a serious threat.

The reports were released Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, which asked for the outside reviews as it presents evidence to a grand jury that will determine whether Timothy Loehmann will be charged in Tamir's death last November.

"We are not reaching any conclusions from these reports," Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said in a statement. "The gathering of evidence continues, and the grand jury will evaluate it all."

He said the reports, which included a technical reconstruction by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, were released in the interest of being "as public and transparent as possible."

Subodh Chandra, a lawyer for the Rice family, said the release of the reports shows the prosecutor is avoiding accountability, which is what the family seeks.

"It is now obvious that the prosecutor's office has been on a 12-month quest to avoid providing that accountability," he said. He added that the prosecutor's office didn't provide his office or the Rice family with the details from the reports. He also questioned the timing of the release, at 8 p.m. Saturday on the Columbus Day holiday weekend.

"To get so-called experts to assist in the whitewash — when the world has the video of what happened — is all the more alarming," Chandra said. "Who will speak for Tamir before the grand jury? Not the prosecutor, apparently."

Both experts were provided with surveillance video of the shooting that showed Loehmann firing at Tamir within two seconds after the police cruiser driven by his partner pulled up next to the boy. Police say the officers were responding to a call about a man with a gun, but were not told the caller said the gun could be a fake and the man an adolescent.

The report prepared by retired FBI agent Kimberly A. Crawford concluded that Loehmann's use of force did not violate Tamir's constitutional rights, saying the only facts relevant to such a determination are those the patrolman had at the time he fired his weapon.

Loehmann, she wrote, "had no information to suggest the weapon was anything but a real handgun, and the speed with which the confrontation progressed would not give the officer time to focus on the weapon."

"It is my conclusion that Officer Loehmann's use of deadly force falls within the realm of reasonableness under the dictates of the Fourth Amendment," Crawford wrote, though she noted she was not issuing an opinion as to whether Loehmann violated Ohio law or department policy.

Lamar Sims, the chief deputy district attorney in Denver, also concluded that Loehmann's actions were reasonable based on statements from witnesses and a reconstruction of what happened that day.

Sims said the officers had no idea if the pellet gun was a real gun when they arrived, and that Loehmann was in a position of great peril because he was within feet of Tamir as the boy approached the cruiser and reached toward his waistband.

"The officers did not create the violent situation," Sims wrote in his review. "They were responding to a situation fraught with the potential for violence to citizens."

Another officer who recovered the pellet gun after Tamir was shot told investigators he first thought the gun was a semiautomatic pistol and was surprised when he realized it wasn't real, Sims noted.

Chandra, the Rice family lawyer, says the experts "dodge the simple fact that the officers rushed Tamir and shot him immediately without assessing the situation in the least. Reasonable jurors could find that conduct unreasonable. But they will never get the chance because the prosecutor is working diligently to ensure that there is no indictment and no accountability."

The pellet gun Tamir was holding shoots non-lethal plastic projectiles but its orange markings had been removed.

The killing of Tamir has become part of a national outcry about minorities, especially black boys and men, dying during encounters with police. His death was not the first to roil Cleveland, either: Earlier this year, a white officer prosecuted by McGinty was acquitted in the 2012 deaths of two unarmed black motorists killed in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire after a high-speed pursuit.

Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice are moving forward on a reform-minded consent decree after a DOJ investigation found Cleveland police had engaged in a practice of using excessive force and violating people's rights. That agreement was in the works before Tamir was killed.
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Source


Absolutely horrifying. I'm at a total loss of words.
 
V

Volimar

Member
This isn't the first time that shitheads calling 911 giving shit information has lead to police going all in. The guy in the Walmart comes to mind. But honestly, police shouldn't just rely on caller statements and should establish what's going on for themselves. This situation is disgusting even moreso since we all pretty much knew this was how it would play out. Our policing policies need to be gutted and rebuilt from the bottom up and everyone needs to be retrained or booted.

Also, fuck that prosecutor.
 
D

double jump

you haven't lived until a random little kid ask you "how do you make love".
released the report on the 20th anniversary of the mmm no less.
what kinda message are they trying to send ?
 
D

DontBeThatGuy

Member
We all saw the video, we all saw the incompetence, and them not getting the information that it was probably fake a gun just makes their actions leading to the shooting even more reprehensible. They handled it in the worst fucking way, and a boy is dead because of it.

Not holding them accountable for that is absolutely disgusting.
 
J

j_k_redtail

Member
A few weeks ago I was driving through a park when a kid made eye contact with me and pointed a cap gun at me as I rolled by. He tracked me for several seconds, before an adult swatted his arm (and hopefully gave him a good scolding). I wasn't really worried because I never thought it was a real gun (because what kind of nut would let a kid play with a gun, and point it at passing vehicles?) It's crazy to think that Tamir Rice was killed for far less than for what that kid did. Would I have been justified in killing him?
 
M

Mental Atrophy

Banned
Volimar said:
The guy in the Walmart comes to mind. But honestly, police shouldn't just rely on caller statements and should establish what's going on for themselves.
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This is generally how it works around here. They pick a staging area and gather more intel, and formulate a plan that tries to mitigate violence. The exception is active shooters, where the policy is to get a strike team assembled as quickly as possible to engage and kill the shooter. It doesn't always work this way because some officers make more independent decisions, but this is usually how I see it go down.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Would he have INSTANTLY shot a 12 year old white kid with a pellet gun?



The answer is no. Mostly because a local shithead would not have called the cops, but the black people are time lords thread also contains some horrifying science.
 
P

PopeReal

Member
As expected. Status quo has to be maintained.

Looking forward to people here lecturing others on how to protest though.
 
G

Guevara

Member
The pellet gun Tamir was holding shoots non-lethal plastic projectiles but its orange markings had been removed.
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This makes me a little sympathetic towards the cops: they get a bad call reporting a man with a gun, they pull up and see what appears to be a man with a gun.

Whole lot of things could have happened better that day: the gun should have looked like the toy it was, the 911 caller could have given more detail, dispatch could have relayed those details, and these two bozo cops could have approached slowly and tried to de-escalate.

Shitty situation all around, but it's a failure with more than one owner in my opinion. But those two cops clearly shouldn't be cops anymore.
 
V

Verelios

Member
This is spine chilling. An officer can just walk up to you nowadays and shoot you point blank with no recourse.

Fuck
 
L

likeGdid

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Has anyone here ever confused a 12-year-old boy as an adult man?
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I remember reading something about this phenomenon a while ago...

Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent Than Whites, Research Finds
WASHINGTON — Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
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http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.aspx
 
V

Volimar

Member
Guevara said:
This makes me a little sympathetic towards the cops: they get a bad call reporting a man with a gun, they pull up and see what appears to be a man with a gun.

Whole lot of things could have happened better that day: the gun should have looked like the toy it was, the 911 caller could have given more detail, dispatch could have relayed those details, and these two bozo cops could have approached slowly and tried to de-escalate.

Shitty situation all around, but it's a failure with more than one owner in my opinion. But those two cops clearly shouldn't be cops anymore.
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Though it's something of a separate issue, I think all toy guns should be colorful to help prevent this kind of thing. But I suppose if someone is going to go to the trouble to remove the orange tips, they'd probably have no trouble spray painting an all orange toy gun to look more real.
 
B

Bodacious

Banned
I mean c'mon, how can you say he reacted reasonably because there was so little time and a *gun!*, when it was the officers themselves who rushed up with their cruiser on the boy, who at the time the police got there was just sitting all alone at a picnic table and threatening nobody. The police created all that intensity with their own actions, and now that intensity is being used to justify shooting a 12 year old. FFS this is blatant.

Don't police cruisers have PA loudspeakers? Couldn't they have barked at him to drop the gun from a distance, then approach? It's not like he was holding anyone hostage. It's not like there was even anyone around him.

I sometimes back up law enforcement in these things, but this was a murder, committed by incompetents.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
If this was a case of him being shot while holding the "gun" it would be hard to argue against the police. The fake gun looked real, it would be an understandable mistake etc etc. But from what I understand the kid wasn't holding the gun when he was shot, and was sitting down. And when they rushed him he panicked, like a kid would, and one movement from him led to him getting shot.

I understand the cops being on edge but still...they clearly fucked up.
 
P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
PhoenixDark said:
If this was a case of him being shot while holding the "gun" it would be hard to argue against the police. The fake gun looked real, it would be an understandable mistake etc etc. But from what I understand the kid wasn't holding the gun when he was shot, and was sitting down. And when they rushed him he panicked, like a kid would, and one movement from him led to him getting shot.

I understand the cops being on edge but still...they clearly fucked up.
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Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1GaaMYhrw0
 
T

travisbickle

Member
Tamir was a child playing on his own in a park. If the justice system don't see his murder by the police as a reality check that the methods employed are endangering every citizen in the US and should be changed then I don't know what will? And innocent people, including children, will continue to be murdered by police.
 
D

DontBeThatGuy

Member
They showed zero common sense, no tact and never put themselves in the position for anyone to make a well thought out, rational decision. You don't get to make horrible decision, murder an innocent person, and be deemed justified in your every action. It's offensive.
 
P

PopeReal

Member
travisbickle said:
Tamir was a child playing on his own in a park. If the justice system don't see his murder by the police as a reality check that the methods employed are endangering every citizen in the US and should be changed then I don't know what will? And innocent people, including children, will continue to be murdered by police.
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Not only will this continue, it will be cheered on by many Americans.
 
D

DontBeThatGuy

Member
PhoenixDark said:
If this was a case of him being shot while holding the "gun" it would be hard to argue against the police. The fake gun looked real, it would be an understandable mistake etc etc. But from what I understand the kid wasn't holding the gun when he was shot, and was sitting down. And when they rushed him he panicked, like a kid would, and one movement from him led to him getting shot.

I understand the cops being on edge but still...they clearly fucked up.
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We live in a country where open-carry is permissible in many states(including Ohio), so no, just having a gun should never be what is justifiable in the use of deadly force. That should only be an option when there's no other option.
 
K

Kettch

Member
A shit caller giving bad information should never be an excuse for an officer failing to properly evaluate a situation on their own. We have no control over what random idiots do, we need to expect more from the police that we pay and train to protect us. Using the police as a free hitman service should not be possible or acceptable.
 
C

Coffee Dog

Banned
jesus fucking christ. i was thinking this wouldn't be justified but result in a slap on the wrist. this is just...horrible.
 
R

RDreamer

Member
DontBeThatGuy said:
We live in a country where open-carry is permissible in many states(including Ohio), so no, just having a gun should never be what is justifiable in the use of deadly force. That should only be an option when there's no other option.
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This. Exactly this. We can't have a country where we say it's ok to have a gun and then allow the police to escalate the situation to straight up murder simply because someone has one.
 
K

Kinyou

Member
Loehmann, she wrote, "had no information to suggest the weapon was anything but a real handgun, and the speed with which the confrontation progressed would not give the officer time to focus on the weapon."
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"He shot the kid so fast he didn't have time to focus on the weapon"
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Is it standard practice for police who believe someone has a gun to zoom right up to the person without warning? If the police were in a "position of great peril" I would argue they willingly put themselves there.
 
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