Tamir Rice protest blocking traffic downtown

Lexington, South Carolina (CNN)GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, weighing in on the decision not to indict police officers in last year’s shooting of Tamir Rice, said a grand jury has made a decision and that “the process worked”.

On Nov. 25, 2014, demonstrators protest the shooting death of Tamir Rice, 12, of Cleveland.

A judge who notably ruled that there was probable cause to criminally charge the officers involved in the Tamir Rice shooting told BuzzFeed News Tuesday that he found County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s handling of the case odd.

Law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, which is representing Rice’s family, detailed the ways in which they say the prosecutor was biased in favor of the police. That disregard pervades every aspect of this case and begins with the fact that the department failed to even review Officer Loehmann’s work history before giving him the power of life and death over the citizens of Cleveland. It was McGinty who announced on Monday that the grand jury voted to not indict the officers.

A committee that would include representatives from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office, the prosecutor’s office and members of the public would review grand jury evidence and make a recommendation, Police Chief Calvin Williams said.

“It certainly was unique, the way they went about it. It was unusual”, says Judge Ronald B. Adrine, a municipal court judge in Cleveland.

Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, released a heartbreaking statement decrying the grand jury’s decision, alleging that a prosecutor “deliberately sabotaged the case” and calling for the federal government to step in. McGinty said an enhanced security camera video showed Rice was reaching for the gun which shoots plastic pellets when the squad auto pulled up next to him. Rice either meant to hand over the gun or show the officers it was not real McGinty said ‘but there was no way for the officers to know that.’ The Airsoft replica of a.45-caliber semiautomatic handgun usually has an orange tip on it but Rice’s gun did not. Loehmann and his training partner, Frank Garmback, had responded to a 911 call about a man waving a gun.

He said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury decision.

The call-taker didn’t relay that information to the dispatcher who sent Loehmann and Garmback to the recreation center.

“People are upset, and legitimately and rightfully so”, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Tuesday.

We demand that the U.S. Department of Justice open an investigation into the murder of Tamir Rice and the unjust pretrial proceedings.