No charges for Cleveland police officers in shooting death of Tamir Rice

CLEVELAND (AP) – 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 Cleveland, the officers involved in the shooting, or the black boy’s grief-stricken family.

On Tuesday, around 50 protesters marched in downtown Cleveland, chanting, “Justice for Tamir!”

Officer Timothy Loehmann shot Rice within seconds of reaching the park in response to reports of a person with a gun. The family also said that the prosecutor allowed the officers to read prepared statements to the grand jury without being subjected to cross-examination. “But there was no way for the officers to know that, because they saw the events rapidly unfolding in front of them from a very different perspective”, McGinty explained. Larry is our main news editor.

On Monday, McGinty stressed that the death of Tamir Rice, while tragic, occurred due to an unfortunate confluence of a number of factors – including the fact that the 911 dispatcher did not relay to Loehmann and Garmback that Rice was believed to be a juvenile and the weapon he was playing with in the park that day was likely a toy.

He also said the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court is looking at whether “grand juries can be improved”.

A video of the shooting recorded by a surveillance camera and released publicly in the days following Rice’s death sparked outrage and helped fuel the national Black Lives Matter protest movement that gathered momentum after black men were killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City.

“Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers’ defense attorney”, they asserted in a statement. His willingness to comment on issues, coupled with his huge fame and influence, caused activist and writer Tariq Touré to create the Twitter hashtag #NoJusticeNoLeBron, calling for James to sit in protest of the outcome of the Rice case.

McGinty said Loehmann was justified in firing: “He had reason to fear for his life”. What the Rice family and others like them need is for local prosecutors like McGinty to be recused in cases involving police violence.

The attorney for Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Tamir, says the officers’ actions were meant to keep the community safe. It looks like a year to bring charges against Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke in the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, or a hung jury in the case of William Porter, the first officer to go to trial for the death of Freddie Gray. “We will ensure that the community in all its forms and CPD have the conversations that are necessary to establish a new, shared vision of policing in Cleveland as the Consent Decree moves forward”. “Both officers have to live with this the rest of their lives”.

Stephen Roberts, who ran the DeKalb County grand jury for two years during his tenure as an assistant DA, has a good idea how the grand jury process works. We still call on them to “serve and protect”-to arrest and kill-because every black child is seen as latent criminal with violent intentions”.