Tamir Rice’s Mother ‘Saddened and Devastated’ by Grand Jury Decision

An Ohio grand jury ruled on Monday (Dec. 28) to not indict two Cleveland officers involved in the 2014 shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

“A reasonable officer would position themselves where they would have some space between themselves and the potential threat where they could have some time and cover”, Gilbert said.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty called it “a ideal storm of human error”.

He said that there was no reason for the officers to know that, and that the officer who fired, Timothy Loehmann, had a reason to fear for his life.

Tamir was shot by Loehmann within two seconds of the officers’ police cruiser skidding to a stop near the boy. The officers say they believed the gun was real when they arrived on scene.

Within hours of the Cuyahoga County announcement in OH, word of the protest in New York City, which was organized by activist group NYC Rise Up 4 Tamir, had spread through social media, replacing a scheduled protest for People’s Monday, a weekly demonstration in Grand Central Terminal held to bring attention to victims of police brutality. The family renewed its request for the US Justice Department to step in and conduct “a real investigation”.

McGinty urged those who disagree with the grand jury decision to react peacefully and said: “It is time for the community and all of us to start to heal”.

The grand jury has been hearing testimony since October about the fatal shooting of Rice by Cleveland police.

Rice was carrying a non-lethal pellet gun when police approached him in Cleveland in November 2014, in response to a 911 call reporting a man waving and pointing a gun at people.

Other witnesses said the pellet gun had previously malfunctioned and that Rice was unable to replace the orange tip on the gun after putting it back together.

“There have been lessons learned already”.

McGinty insisted that “steps have been taken” to ensure that this “tragic event” does not happen again, including outfitting all Cleveland police officers with body cameras in order to help “improve public confidence and improve performance”. National Action Network has stood by Tamir’s family since the egregious killing that took young Tamir’s life and his mother joined us at a national march for police accountability previous year in the nation’s capital.

Cleveland’s reputation has suffered because of some well-publicized police shootings, including the killings of two unarmed black people in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire at the end of a 2012 vehicle chase.

“Prosecutors continue to wield unchecked authority over Black communities”, Robinson said in the statement.

The child’s family has questioned Loehmann’s account of the shooting, and has sued the city and both officers in federal court, notes the report.

The way Prosecutor McGinty has mishandled the grand-jury process has compounded the grief of this family. The statement went on to say, “We respect and appreciate the Grand Jury’s ability to apply the law to the facts of this case without regard to emotion or the self-serving agendas of uninvolved others”.

“It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire “experts” to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation”. However, information given to the 911 operator that the suspect may have been a juvenile and the gun may have been fake was never passed on to dispatch.