Black Lives Matter group holds rally after grand jury decision

Prosecutors in Cleveland are defending their decision to recommend that a grand jury not bring charges against two officers in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Family attorney Subodh Chandra said Samaria Rice wept for much of the day after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty’s announcement that Loehmann and Garmback wouldn’t be charged.

In December previous year, a federal probe launched by the Justice Department – well before the Tamir Rice shooting – found that Cleveland police had engaged in a pattern of using excessive force. The officers are white and Rice was black. Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, fired on Rice, who is black, within seconds of arriving to the Cudell Recreation Area. In a statement released after the press conference on Monday, the family said McGinty had abused and manipulated the grand jury into voting against indicting the officers. The family also said that the prosecutor allowed the officers to read prepared statements to the grand jury without being subjected to cross-examination.

Assistant Prosecutor Matthew Meyer said it was “extremely difficult” to tell the difference between the pellet gun and a real one.

Though the man who placed the emergency call told the operator Rice may have been a juvenile and the gun could have been fake, those details didn’t get relayed to the dispatcher, according to the report.

Later Monday, dozens of people protested in New York City, trying to block streets to express outrage at the OH grand jury decision in Rice’s case.

Mayor Frank Jackson says city officials have been meeting with neighborhood groups and clergy leaders in recent months.

Tamir’s killing came amid a year of controversial and highly publicised police killings and assaults on black people that prompted ongoing mass protests. There was a grand jury, in which-instead of deciding if there was enough evidence to indict-McGinty did the opposite and began a campaign of publicly citing reasons to ease the pressure after the decision to not indict. More details emerged: that Rice wore large trousers; that the video had been enhanced; and that Loehmann gave verbal commands and aimed for the gun.

“I do not have a comment on what the grand jury did”, he said. “The outcome will not cheer anyone, nor should it”, McGinty said.

The Times lamented the prosecutor’s portrayal of Rice’s death as “a tragic misunderstanding”, which has “the reprehensible effect of shifting the responsibility for this death onto the shoulders of this very young victim”.

“The tragedy of Tamir Rice must be seen with unblinking clarity through the lens of a series of incidents of police misconduct committed by members of the Cleveland Police Department over years”.