Tamir Rice protesters want Cleveland prosecutor to step down

Protesters upset by a decision not to indict two white police officers in the shooting death of a 12-year-old black boy marched to the home of the Cleveland prosecutor on Friday and called on him to resign.

Rice was shot in November 2014 at a Cleveland recreation center while playing with what turned out to be a pellet gun.

According to The Counted, an online database maintained by The Guardian, U.S. police killed 1134 Americans in 2015, most of whom were black.

McGinty announced the decision not to indict officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback in a press conference Monday.

The Rice shooting came just days before a grand jury opted not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in the St Louis, Missouri, suburb of Ferguson in August 2014.

“New year, no more!” protesters chanted.

A protest leader told protesters not to vandalize McGinty’s house.

Rice’s family members said they were saddened but unsurprised by the grand jury’s decision not to indict Loehmann.

Several protesters laid down on the sidewalk outside of McGinty’s home for four minutes – the length of time it took for first responders to reach Rice after he was shot.

AP reports that McGinty’s spokesperson declined to comment.

It turns out that Rice had an airsoft pistol that police say looked like a real gun.

McGinty said police radio personnel contributed to the tragedy by failing to pass along the “all-important fact” that a 911 caller said the gunman was probably a juvenile and the gun probably was not real.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty described a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day” but said evidence considered by the grand jury “did not indicate criminal conduct by police”.