Officers Involved in Tamir Rice Shooting Death to Face New Administrative Review

“As a religious leader and also a political leader and also a mother, I am just astonished – astonished that the judicial system does not have a problem with murdering black people”, one woman said.

Rice had a replica of a.45-caliber handgun that fires plastic pellets. On Monday, prosecutors said a grand jury concluded that Loehmann reasonably believed that it was a real gun and that his life was in danger.

There was more fallout today in the wake of a Cuyahoga County grand jury’s decision this week not to indict two Cleveland police officers in the shooting of Tamir Rice. Jackson said protesters have every right to voice their opinion, but he said the city won’t tolerate any violence. A coalition of community activists in Cleveland, Ohio are swiftly planning to remove Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty from office.

Frank Garmback, the training officer who drove the cruiser that day, and Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Tamir, might have acted differently if they’d been given that information, said Michael Maloney, Garmback’s attorney.

Rice’s family said they were “saddened and disappointed” by the grand jury’s decision “but not surprised”. McGinty said Tamir was trying to hand the weapon over to police or to show them it wasn’t real, but the officers had no way of knowing that.

“Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified”.

The 911 caller did tell the dispatcher that the figure with a firearm might be a young adult playing with a toy gun… but he thought the threat was realistic enough to make a 911 call.

“Everybody has this vision of a cold, callous person who shot a 12-year-old”, Henry Hilow said. The officers are white and Rice was black. Barricades were set up outside a Cleveland courthouse in case of protests, and about two dozen people gathered in the cold rain at the recreation center where Tamir was shot, some holding signs with photos of the boy and others killed by police in the U.S. They said the grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer responsible for Rice’s death is unacceptable. He added that it was apparent to him that McGinty was being as transparent as he possibly could be, so nobody “could come back at him and say he withheld any evidence”.

Cleveland has a long record of police misconduct subject to multiple and serial federal investigations.

“The way prosecutor McGinty has mishandled the grand jury process has compounded the grief of this family”, the statement said.