Feds will continue review of Tamir Rice case

Rice’s family – who have denounced the judicial proceedings, saying that they were created to exculpate the officers – have sued the city of Cleveland and both policemen for the boy’s death.

Information that the gun the caller saw was probably not real and that the person holding it appeared to be a juvenile was not conveyed to Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, according to recordings that law enforcement released.

Moments before Rice can be seen walking around the park with the toy weapon in his hand talking on his mobile phone as police arrive.

A handful of protesters were outside the Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) County Justice Center on Monday afternoon, about an hour after Prosecutor Tim McGinty announced the grand jury’s decision.

“Given this flawless storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police”.

The grand jury declined to indict either Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shots, or his partner Frank Garmback.

They also wrote a letter earlier this month asking the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene and conduct its own criminal investigation.

“There was no way the officers could know” the real situation, Mr. McGinty said. “At the point when Tamir and the rookie officer came together, both Tamir and the officer were no doubt frightened”.

Among other things, the family charged that McGinty improperly hired use of-force experts to tell the grand jury that Loehmann’s actions were reasonable.

“This is apparently how long it takes to engineer denying justice to a family when the video of the incident clearly illustrates probable cause to charge the officer”, said Subodh Chandra, the attorney who represents Rice’s family in a federal civil rights lawsuit over the shooting.

On November 22, 2014, an unidentified witness called 911 to report a young man was pointing a gun at people and cars at the Cudell Recreation Center playground.

“It was a tough conversation”, he said. The officers are white and Rice was black.

“That original grainy video is only a small part of the story”, the prosecutor said.

McGinty also noted that the neighborhood has a history of violence and that a short distance away are memorials to two Cleveland police officers fatally shot in the line of duty.

The civil courts may provide some accountability to the boy’s family “that they deserve”, McGinty said.

After the boy’s killing, it was learned that Loehmann had washed out from the police force in the Cleveland suburb of Independence.

Rice’s death sparked an investigation by the Justice Department into a pattern of excessive force by Cleveland police officers, resulting in a consent decree that binds the city to reforms. He also said, “If we put ourselves in the victim’s shoes, as prosecutors and detectives try to do, it is likely that Tamir, whose size made him look much older and who had been warned that his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day, either meant to hand it over to the officers or show them that it wasn’t a real gun”.

The grand jury had been hearing evidence and testimony since mid-October.

The family urged anyone who’s disappointed in the grand jury decision to express that “peacefully and democratically”.

The officer was in training outside a Cleveland recreation center in November 2014. He said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury decision.