Officer won’t face charges in shooting death of Cleveland boy

At time of the shooting, Rice was in a park, playing with an air gun he had borrowed from a friend. The Cleveland police initially investigated the case, then the county sheriff’s office conducted its own inquiry.

It turns out that Rice had an airsoft pistol that police say looked like a real gun. The grand jury also declined to indict Mr Garmback.

Referring to the video which shows Rice reaching for his gun as the officers approached, McGinty said Loehmann “had reason to fear for his life”. He added that the two officers remain on restricted duty.

Protests in Cleveland and across the United States in response to no indictment of officers involved in shooting and killing 12 year old Tamir Rice. The family’s attorneys also said they are renewing their request for the Department of Justice to “step in to conduct a real investigation”.

Steve Loomis, the head of Cleveland’s police union, said the organization is pleased with the grand jury’s finding but said the decision “is no cause for celebration and there will be none”.

Loehmann shot Rice twice after the boy pulled the gun from his waistband. It turned out to be a pellet gun.

US police nationwide have always been accused of exercising racial discrimination in fighting crimes. ProPublica’s Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones, and Eric Sagara reported: ‘One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica’s analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk.

The officers were “frightened” and did not realize that Rice – who was tall for his age – was just a boy with a toy, McGinty said. “Communities and policing need to come together”. “When they act for the safety of the community, they’re vilified for it”.

Their numbers had dropped to about 40 people as they marched along Cleveland streets chanting.

One of the “experts”, Denver, Colorado prosecutor S. Lamar Sims, was involved in the district attorney’s report that cleared Denver police in the shooting of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez earlier this year, and he spoke in favor of Loehmann on Denver public television months before being contracted by McGinty.

Prosecutor Tim McGinty said, however, that Loehmann and his partner had no way of knowing what was happening.

In Cleveland, protesters and sympathizers with the Rice family left stuffed animals, books and Christmas presents in the gazebo where the shooting occurred.

“It would have weighed in”, Maloney said. The gun looked like a real gun, but it can only fire nonlethal plastic pellets. It was missing its telltale orange tip.

He said that because of that new enhancement, “it is now indisputable that Tamir was drawing his gun from his waist as the police vehicle slid toward him and Officer Loehmann exited the auto”. But the caller also said it could be a juvenile and the gun might be a fake.

“When our children’s lives are taken and there’s no accountability for anyone, that actually is something that will continue to fuel the movement”, she said.

A rookie patrolman fatally shot Tamir within two seconds of a police cruiser driven by another officer skidding to a stop near him. Tamir was holding a pellet gun when he was killed.

Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice and her family issued a statement following the announcement. He said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury decision. He says lessons have been learned from the shooting, and the city has taken steps to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again.

In announcing the decision Monday, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said he did not recommend that the grand jury bring any charges.

A video of the police shooting of Rice sparked rage nationally at police excessive use of force and discrimination against African Americans.

They claimed that it is unprecedented and highly inappropriate for a prosecutor to hire so-called experts to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation. “They know that the power of the grand jury to indict is easy – they do it all the time”.