Grand jury declines to indict officers in Tamir Rice case

Protesters took to the streets in NY and Cleveland after it was revealed a grand jury would not indict a police officer over the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

A local prosecutor in OH state, Tim McGinty, called the events that led to the death of Tamir Rice a “perfect storm of human error”.

Despite the grand jury decision not to charge a white patrolman in the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the case is far from over for the city of the Cleveland, the officers involved in the shooting or the black boy’s grief-stricken family.

In a statement read to the grand jury and released by prosecutors, Loehmann said he yelled for Rice to show his hands and saw him pull a gun from his waistband before the officer fired.

In announcing the decision Monday, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said he did not recommend that the grand jury bring any charges.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the family against the two officers and the city of Cleveland is pending. She also said that, “The prosecutor conducted the investigation in a manner that I believe inappropriate and as a result he has lost the trust and confidence of our community, and, indeed, mine as well”.

Rice was shot in a park after 911 caller reported an individual carrying a gun in the area of a nearby rec center-but the dispatcher crucially failed to tell Loehmann and Garmback that the caller had said the gun was “probably fake”. Tamir was carrying a borrowed airsoft gun that looks like an actual firearm but shoots nonlethal plastic pellets.

The march started outside a West Side recreation center, where an officer shot Tamir in November 2014 while investigating a report of someone with a gun scaring people.

FILE – This Nov. 26, 2014 file photo shows a still image taken from a surveillance video recorded on Nov. 22, 2014, that was played at a news conference held by Cleveland Police.

“Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers’ defense attorney”, the statement said. According to report on the decision of the grand jury, even after careful comparison, it is hard for trained eyes to notice the difference.

After the boy’s killing, it was learned that Loehmann had washed out from the police force in the Cleveland suburb of Independence.

“It’s not surprising that the Rice family is not satisfied with how it looks like the prosecutor presented this case to the grand jury”.

“Tamir Rice’s death was a heartbreaking tragedy and I understand how this decision will leave many people asking themselves if justice was served”, he said in a statement.

Outside the recreation centre, protesters chanted: “No justice, no peace!” He said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury decision.

“It would be irresponsible and unreasonable if the law required a police officer to wait and see if the gun was real”, McGinty told reporters.

Shortly after the grand jury announcement Monday, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said the next step is an administrative review of whether the officers violated any police department policies.

My family and I are in pain and devastated by the non-indictment of officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the murder of our beloved Tamir. It follows by less than a week a grand jury ruling not to press charges against jailers in southeast Texas in the unexplained death of Sandra Bland, who was jailed on trumped-up charges and then found dead in her cell, supposedly a suicide.