Cleveland officers still in jeopardy over Tamir Rice case

A grand jury in the USA state of OH declined to bring criminal charges against Cleveland police officers involved in the fatal shooting last year of a 12-year-old boy named Tamir Rice, a prosecutor said Monday. The boy died hours later in hospital.

While the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland has said it will review the circumstances of the shooting, the legal hurdles to prosecuting a civil rights case are considered especially high.

A grainy surveillance-camera video of the boy’s November 2014 shooting provoked outrage nationally, and together with other killings of black people by police in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, it helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.

Many held signs of black people who have been killed by police recently.

On Tuesday, about 50 people marched peacefully in front of the county courthouse in downtown Cleveland to protest the grand jury decision. 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.

Residents came out chanting “No Justice, No Peace” at the rally.

“They run a big risk if they don’t”, Katz said.

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.

Prosecutors who recommended bringing no charges against two officers in the shooting of Tamir Rice said they were required to reveal to a grand jury they didn’t think a conviction was possible.

The boy’s family has criticized how prosecutors handled the case. McGinty said Tamir was trying to either hand the weapon over to police or show them it wasn’t real, but the officer and his partner had no way of knowing that.

In December 2014, a federal probe launched by the Justice Department – well before the Rice shooting – found that Cleveland police had engaged in a pattern of using excessive force.

In a year when police violence against blacks has proven a challenge for many political leaders-including Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who is facing calls for his resignation over the handling of one such incident-Kasich’s tone differed markedly from that of some of his Republican rivals, who have decried the protests that have erupted over alleged incidents of racially inspired police violence. Protesters blocked intersections and attempted to enter the ramp onto I-90, but police stopped them and threatened arrest if demonstrators entered the highway.

Katz said the city officials might want to cut their losses and settle with the Rice family. So far, there have been just a handful of peaceful protests around the city.