Administrative review next for officers involved in Tamir Rice case

A grand jury in Cleveland in the U.S. state of OH on Monday acquitted a white police officer who shot and killed a 12-year-old black teenager last year.

While the police radio personnel described the suspect’s clothing to the officers, they did not tell them that the 911 caller had said that the suspect may have been a minor and that the gun he was carrying may not have been real.

It was many things, but yesterday a grand jury ruled it was not a crime, that the rookie officer who pulled the trigger “had reason to fear for his life”, and that “there was no way to know Tamir’s gun was not real”.

Both attorneys said the officers weren’t available for interviews because of a pending federal lawsuit filed by Tamir’s family against them and the city. An attorney for Garmback issued a statement that said the officers “acted within the bounds of the law”. He said he did not believe a judge or a jury would convict either officer. Cuyahoga County District Attorney Tim McGinty has already drawn sharp criticism from Rice’s family and on social media for his handling of the case.

Prosecutors said in a report released Monday that the gun Tamir was carrying – at the top and right – was “functionally identical” to the real one pictured at the bottom left.

An Ohio grand jury decided on Monday not to indict Loehmann or Garmback on any charges of criminal misconduct.

Officer Timothy Loehmann shot Tamir within seconds of emerging from a cruiser because the officer thought the boy was drawing a gun from his waistband.

McGinty had previously said his office wasn’t using the reports to reach a conclusion and that the grand jury would get to consider all the evidence to reach its decision.

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”.

They accused McGinty of “abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment” and urged federal prosecutors to “step in to conduct a real investigation”.

The decision was faced with condemnation from Tamir’s family. But prosecutors say plenty of mistakes were made that led to the tragedy.

Jackson would not comment on the grand jury’s decision, but said he has heard from citizens expressing a perceived “lack of fairness and a lack of justice” after the decision.

For the Rice family, the shooting and the subsequent investigation was symptomatic of much more than a “perfect storm of human error”.

“In a time in which a non-indictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who have been killed by police without justice…”

Now, an administrative hearing will now be held to determine if the officers violated any departmental policies during the shooting of the 12-year-old. Police Chief Calvin Williams says the two officers remain on restricted duty. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can.

“After this investigation – which took over a year to unfold – and Prosecutor McGinty’s mishandling of this case, we no longer trust the local criminal justice system, which we view as corrupt”, a statement from Tamir’s mother read, according to the Washington Post.

Loehmann opened fire from a distance estimated at 4½ to 7 feet, getting off two shots and missing with one of them.