Union: No reason to celebrate Tamir Rice ruling

A grand jury has declined to bring criminal charges against two Cleveland police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 12-year old Tamir Rice.

She also said, “It’s a very somber day here in Cleveland and it’s also a really disappointing day for a family, for the city, for activists in a community throughout the country who have consistently advocated for children, for people to be safe in this country”. Jackson was responding to questions about a Cuyahoga County grand jury decision not to indict Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehman for the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November 2014.

“As the video shows, Officer Loehmann shot my son in less than a second”, his family said in a statement. The squad vehicle in which Loehmann arrived at the scene was being driven by his partner, Frank Garmback.

The Cuyahoga County grand jury declined to indict the Cleveland police officers in the Tamir Rice case. “The outcome will not cheer anyone, nor should it”, McGinty said.

He said policeman Timothy Loehmann was justified in opening fire, adding: “He had reason to fear for his life”. Saying that “it became real” that there was no criminal activity on behalf of the officers, McGinty said it would be unreasonable for the law to ask that the officers wait to conclude whether the firearm that Rice was carrying was real or not. About two dozen protesters marched through cold and rain, decrying a legal system that did not view the killing of a 12-year-old with a replica airsoft pellet gun as a crime.

Elle Hearns, the coordinator for Black Lives Matter in Cleveland, told NPR’s Audie Cornish that the decision not to indict was “devastating” for the family “who have consistently made requests for support and also for accountability in the murder of Tamir”.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of OH said it will continue its independent review of the case to “determine what actions are appropriate, given the strict burdens and requirements imposed by applicable federal civil rights laws”. He also told the dispatcher that it might be a juvenile and the gun might not be real.

Chandra wrote that McGinty had been “abusing and manipulating” the grand jury toward no indictments.

Announcing the decision at a news conference, OH prosecutor Timothy McGinty called the 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice “a flawless storm of human error”. McGinty said the city has taken steps to prevent this kind of shooting from happening again.

Throughout the grand jury hearing process, the Rice family attorney, Subodh Chandra, repeatedly expressed frustration with testimony by “so-called “experts” hired by McGinty.

The Times reported that McGinty believes publicly releasing evidence increases the transparency of the investigation and could help prevent unrest akin to that in Ferguson, Missouri, where evidence was only made available to the public after the decision not to indict the police shooter was announced.

“With his hands pulling the gun out and his elbow coming up, I knew it was a gun and it was coming out”, Mr Loehmann said in a statement he read to the grand jury.

In detailing the decision not to bring charges, McGinty said police radio personnel contributed to the tragedy by failing to pass along the “all-important fact” that the 911 caller said the gunman was probably a youngster and the gun probably wasn’t real.

McGinty said it was a “tough conversation” with Rice’s mother when she was told there would be no charges. The decision comes after a lengthy investigation by the Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office and county prosecutors and a grand jury presentation that began in late October.