About 50 people gather for Tamir Rice protest

John Kasich declined to weigh in Tuesday on a grand jury’s decision to not indict police officers in last year’s shooting of an unarmed 12-year-old boy in Cleveland.

About 100 protesters marched through the streets of Cleveland Tuesday, calling for Prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s resignation and Timothy Loehmann’s badge.

A grand jury announced on Monday that no criminal charges would be brought in the November 2014 shooting of Tamir while he had what turned out to be a pellet gun.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson made a similar plea as police set up metal barricades outside the Justice Centre after Mr McGinty’s press conference.

Photo compilation: 12-year-old Tamir Rice; a comparison of the Airsoft replica he was carrying the day he was killed with a real 1911 Colt pistol it was modeled after, according to officials. They said the grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer responsible for Rice’s death is unacceptable.

In a statement, Tamir’s family said it was “saddened and disappointed by this outcome – but not surprised”.

A judge had recommended in June that there was probable cause to charge the officers, but independent reports ordered by McGinty’s office and released in October found that officer Timothy Loehmann was justified in shooting Rice.

Activists Move Forward for Justice in Tamir Rice Case.

“There’s been lots of cases where he [President Obama] goes out and calls for an investigation and it turns out there’s nothing there; not civil rights violations or any of the civil violations that he had jurisdiction over”, he said.

“The actions of officers Garmback and Loehmann were not criminal”, McGinty said. We can not help but wonder whether Tamir Rice would still be alive today if he had been a white child, still big for his age, playing with the same pellet gun in a different neighborhood.

But Tamir, who was shot to death by a white police officer that day, where the police have historically behaved as an occupying force that shoots first and asks questions later.

Around 60 to 80 protesters walked from the Justice Center to the city’s Shoreway as law enforcement squad cars, mounted police and members of the media followed them. The prosecutor conceded that Tamir might have been trying to show to the cops that the gun was real but the officer and his partner had no way of knowing that.

A rookie patrolman fatally shot Tamir within two seconds of a police cruiser driven by another officer skidding to a stop near him.