Officer Acted ‘Reasonably’ in Tamir Rice Shooting, Investigators Find

“We are really experiencing, through the actions of our prosecutor, really a slow, simmering pot that is leading to a boil of injustice”, said Rev. Jowanza Colbin, a member of the Cleveland 8 activist group, which has rallied for the arrest of the two officers involved in Rice’s death.

“What he should be doing, as in any other grand jury, he should be looking to answer a simple question: ‘Is there probable cause that a crime has occurred?’ That’s it,” he said.

However, the Rice family believes the prosecutor’s office has not practiced what they preach.

Denver’s Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney S. Lamar Sims writes in his report that the officers’ initial decision to park close to Rice shouldn’t affect the decision whether to charge them in the fatal shooting.

Rice’s death came only two days after a grand jury in St. Louis County decided not to indict Darren Wilson, at the time an officer with the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri, over an August 2014 incident in which he fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen.

12-year-old Tamir Rice’s grandmother and his father’s attorney opened up Monday about a recent report released by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

Wrote Crawford elsewhere in her report “The after acquired information – that the individual was twelve-years-old, and the weapon in question was an “airsoft gun” – is not relevant to a constitutional review of Officer Loehmann’s actions”.

“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. “The thing that jumps off the page of both reports is how much they gloss over the fact that these officers created the danger.” “Not the prosecutor, apparently”. At the time, Rice was reportedly armed with a handgun, and Officer Loehmann was without cover. The witnesses concluded that the officer’s use of deadly force “falls within the realm of reasonableness”.

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. “They were responding to a situation fraught with the potential for violence to citizens”. “But they will never get the chance, because the prosecutor is working diligently to ensure that there is no indictment and no accountability”.

“That certainly raises doubt in the Rice family’s mind again as to why this expert, this supposed expert, was engaged and what the agenda is here”, said Chandra.

The killing of Tamir has become part of a national outcry about minorities, especially black boys and men, dying during encounters with police.

Cleveland is now carrying out its police reform agreement with the Justice Department to diversify its police force and bring in more African-Americans, Hispanics and women. That agreement was in the works before Tamir was killed.