Tamir Rice Family Lawyer: Prosecutor Avoiding Accountability

The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office said it was not reaching any conclusions based on the reports.

Rice was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer November 22, 2014 in the playground area of the Cudell Recreation Center.

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. “However, for all of the reasons discussed herein, I conclude that Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat”.

Reports from a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a Denver prosecutor were included in documents released Saturday by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, which asked for the outside reviews.

Rice’s death sparked outrage at a time when others, mostly African Americans, have fallen victim to police violence, triggering protests throughout the United States and public outcries for police reform.

“It is now obvious that the prosecutor’s office has been on a 12-month quest to avoid providing that accountability”, he said. A lawyer for the boy’s family, however, says the outside reports finding that the shooting was justified show that prosecutors are avoiding accountability.

“The Rice family and Clevelanders have always said that they want the officers who rushed upon and killed 12-year-old Tamir held accountable”, the family’s attorney, Subodh Chandra, said in a statement.

“(Getting) so-called experts to assist in the whitewash – when the world has the video of what happened – is all the more alarming”, he said.

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking”, Sims writes in his report. Reasonable jurors in a criminal trial could find that conduct unreasonable.

The reports are by no means a conclusion, McGinty prefaced, but rather evidence to aid a grand jury’s decision on whether to indict Loehmann – though successful indictments against police officers have been a national rarity in a recent wave of police shootings decried as excessive force against minorities.

A witness called 911, reporting there was “a guy with a pistol”, adding that the weapon was “probably” fake.

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”. McGinty said additional reports have also been commissioned and will be released publicly. Also that month – in a non-binding review of the case – a Cleveland judge found probable cause for the charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against Loehmann.