The last thing the shooting of Tamir Rice could be considered is reasonable.
Very rarely am I at a loss for words, but it took me approximately 24 hours to gather my thoughts in order to respond to this madness, which I will be doing over the next several days. During the process of researching the story. I cam across Shaun King’s response to this and he nails it.
My suggestion is to bypass any and all attempts at protesting, and instead, pull the black dollar out of the local economy to be reinvested in the black economy and community. It is time to take action! ~ Dr. Rick Wallace, Ph.D.
Shooting of Tamir Rice Ruled Reasonable in Independent Investigation
Tamir Rice shooting was ‘reasonable,’ two experts conclude
By Steve Almasy, CNN
Updated 5:58 PM ET, Mon October 12, 2015
(CNN) The police shooting death of a 12-year-old Cleveland boy with a pellet gun was reasonable, two experts say in reports prepared for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor.
Tamir Rice was killed by an officer in training outside a Cleveland recreation center in November 2014. The shooting sparked controversy given Tamir’s age and the fact that he had a gun that resembled a handgun but fired pellets.
It also came as the nation reeled from police-involved shootings of unarmed African-American men. Tamir was black.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said a grand jury will decide whether Officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, will face charges.
The two reports, as well as a third one by the Highway Patrol, were posted on the prosecutor’s website Saturday night.
“These cases are, by their very nature, different than other matters that come to our office,” McGinty said in a written statement. “They demand a higher level of public scrutiny as well as a careful evaluation of the officer’s conduct and whether, under law, those actions were reasonable under the circumstances.”
Read the reports: Report by Colorado prosecutor | Report by former FBI agent | Highway Patrol report
S. Lamar Sims, the senior chief deputy district attorney in Denver, wrote one of the reports and concludes Loehmann’s decision to shoot Rice as he approached the officers was “objectively reasonable”
“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Sims writes in his report. “However, for all of the reasons discussed herein, I conclude that Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.”
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Neither Loehmann nor Garmback spoke with the reports’ authors.
Family response
An attorney for the Rice family said the experts were part of a whitewashing of the case. Subodh Chandra said the family wants the officers held accountable, but doesn’t think McGinty’s office is pursuing it.
“Any presentation to a grand jury — without the prosecutor advocating for Tamir — is a charade,” Chandra said. “To get so-called experts to assist in the whitewash — when the world has the video of what happened — is all the more alarming.”
Chandra criticized the experts as “pro-police” and said it was obvious from the video that the officers never assessed the situation.
“Reasonable jurors could find that conduct unreasonable,” he said, adding that the family believes the prosecutor “is working diligently to ensure that there is no indictment.”
The shooting
Tamir had been playing near the swings of a recreation center near his home when he was shot on November 22. He died a day later.
A witness called 911, reporting there was “a guy with a pistol,” adding that the weapon was “probably” fake.
Information that the gun the caller saw was probably not real and that the person holding it appeared to be a juvenile was not conveyed to Loehmann and Garmback, according to recordings that law enforcement released.
Video of the incident shows a patrol car pull up on the snowy grass near a gazebo where Tamir is standing. Within two seconds of exiting the police car, Loehmann shoots the boy.
The gun was in the waistband of Tamir’s pants. Sims writes that in the video it appears the boy’s hands moved toward his waistband but it is unclear if he reached for the gun.
Kimberly Crawford, a 20-year veteran of the FBI and a former instructor at the agency’s academy, writes that when the officers approached Tamir they were responding to a report of a male suspect with a gun he kept pulling from his pants.
“The after-acquired information — that the individual was 12 years old, and the weapon in question was an ‘airsoft gun’– is not relevant to a constitutional review of Officer Loehmann’s actions,” she writes in one of the other reports posted Saturday.
She says Loehmann was required to make a threat assessment and a split-second decision on whether to shoot.
“His response was a reasonable one,” she writes.
McGinty said his office wasn’t using the reports to reach a conclusion and the grand jury will get to consider all the evidence once the investigation into shooting is done.
In June, McGinty released the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office report. Also that month — in a non-binding review of the case — a Cleveland judge found probable cause for the charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against Loehmann.
Tamir Rice report: No proof police officer shouted warning before shooting
Judge: Probable cause to charge Cleveland officers in Tamir Rice case
CNN’s John Murgatroyd, Tony Marco, Dana Ford, Ralph Ellis and Melissa Gray contributed to this report.
Here is Shaun King’s Response to the release of this information:
On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland Police while he was playing in his local neighborhood park. Now, a full 11 months after his death, prosecutors who claim they’re still investigating the case have started leaking random “expert” reports they commissioned, stating that the murder was reasonable.Really? What the hell does reasonable mean? Because this shooting was anything but reasonable.
Released on a Saturday night, these reports appear to be prepping the city for the reality that the prosecutor’s office has little intention of presenting charges to the grand jury.
Here are seven reasons why the police murder of Tamir Rice was completely unreasonable, and Officer Timothy Loehmann should be fired immediately and charged with his murder. You must consider all of the facts in concert with one another to see just how criminal Rice’s murder truly was.
1. Years before Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed Tamir Rice, he was fired from his local police department in Independence, Ohio, just 12 miles away from Cleveland.
In their final report on his termination, which included statements on his poor performance in gun training, his extreme emotional instability, and his willingness to lie, his supervising officers detailed infraction after infraction and concluded “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”
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2. Between 2010 and 2012, multiple police departments including the New York Police Department refused to hire Officer Timothy Loehmann. Just five months after he was hired by the Independence Police Department, he was fired. In the months that followed, Loehmann applied for new police jobs in Akron, Euclid, and Parma Heights, Ohio, and was turned down by each of them.
Then, in September 2013, Loehmann failed the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department written entrance exam, with a failing score of 46 out of 100. Note: 70 is the minimum score allowable for entrance. Mind you, this was after he had already served as a police officer for five months and been terminated.
3. The Cleveland Police Department was criminally negligent when it hired Officer Timothy Loehmann without checking his work history and the devastatingly relevant recommendations from his previous supervising officers, in which they detailed the exact deficiencies that would eventually lead to the death of Tamir Rice.
The Cleveland Police Department now admits it failed to check Loehmann’s background when they hired him. Their response, giving one supervising officer a two-day suspension and another officer a write-up in his file, amounts to a proverbial “oopsie.”
Two Cleveland police supervisors who hired the officer who later shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice have been disciplined.Lt. Gail Bindel and Sgt. Edwin Santiago “failed to adequately supervise and review an applicant’s background investigation” and were found guilty of administrative charges including neglect of duty, according to documents.
Bindel was suspended for two days, and Santiago received a written reprimand, according to the letters dated July 9.
4. Apparently not knowing they were being filmed when they spoke to their police union reps and supervising officers the day of the shooting, the officers who killed Rice made egregiously false claims about what happened.
a. To create an atmosphere of intimidation, police falsely stated that Tamir Rice was sitting at a picnic table with several other people right before he came and confronted them.
This was never true. Nobody else ever sat at that table with Rice or could’ve been mistaken as such. The 911 calls never said such a thing either. It’s a total fabrication. Here he is just three seconds before the police pull up and shoot him.
Here’s the false report from the day Rice died—before police knew a video existed.
Police were responding to reports of a male with a gun outside Cudell Recreation Center at Detroit Avenue and West Boulevard about 3:30 p.m., Deputy Chief of Field Operations Ed Tomba said.A rookie officer and a 10-15 year veteran pulled into the parking lot and saw a few people sitting underneath a pavilion next to the center.
b. Police then falsely claimed that right before they shot Rice, he pulled a very real-looking BB gun out on them. In fact, this was the headline and the dominant narrative of the day Rice died. The video had not yet been released, so it really ruled early on.
It’s a complete fabrication.
The rookie officer saw a black gun sitting on the table, and he saw the boy pick up the gun and put it in his waistband, Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Jeffrey Follmer said.The officer got out of the car and told the boy to put his hands up. The boy reached into his waistband, pulled out the gun and the rookie officer fired two shots, Tomba said.
First, see the actual video for yourself.
Notice that they said they saw the scene so well, that they saw a gun on the table next to Rice. However, they also said they saw multiple other people sitting there as well.
Let me get this right: oYu saw imaginary people, but also saw a six-inch gun on the table?
Also, the officers claimed they repeatedly told Rice to put his hands up but he refused. Except he was shot in .792 seconds from the time the door to the police car opened.
Demonstrate that with your own voice and the stopwatch on your phone. How many times can you say, “Put your hands up” in .792 seconds. Now imagine saying it, giving them time to comply, and shooting someone. The Cleveland Police are claiming this all took place in .792 seconds. It’s a physical impossibility.
5. Nothing could be more important than this: Tamir Rice did not pull a gun out on police. Not only that, but the day he died, police brought the gun out, showed how it did not have a bright neon tip, and stated that police, in a short period of time, could not tell the difference.
Except that when Rice was shot, they never saw the tip of the gun in the first place. This is a false flag, a ruse, a concoction, a fabrication.
6. Few outlets have honestly reported how heinous the crucial minutes were that followed police shooting Tamir Rice in the stomach. Mind you, he survived until the next day, but after Officer Timothy Loehmann shot Rice, he and his partner, Officer Garmback, completely ignored him.
Even after discovering that the gun was definitively a BB gun, they didn’t hold his hand, attend to the gaping hole that ripped through his stomach and intestines, or comfort him in any way whatsoever. When Rice’s 15-year-old sister arrived on the scene and saw her brother dying, they tackled her and locked her in the police car parked right next to Rice’s body.
They continued to ignore Rice as he bled out on the snow for four minutes. In fact, the officers who killed Rice never tended to him. It wasn’t until an FBI agent arrived on the scene that the boy received an ounce of attention or compassion.
Here’s a second-by-second timeline of what happened.
0:00 – 0:07 :: We see Rice sitting at the park tables, hanging out, alone. His sister, who is also at the park, is out of sight of the camera.0:08 – 0:16 :: We see Rice get up from table and begin calmly walking toward what we soon see is the police car.
0:17 :: The police car, driven by Officer Frank Garmback, first comes to a full stop, just feet away from Tamir Rice.
0:18 :: Within one second of the car stopping, Officer Timothy Loehmann opens his door and shoots Tamir Rice in the stomach without even fully getting out of the vehicle.
0:18 :: Tamir Rice is seen falling down from being shot.
0:20 :: Officer Timothy Loehmann, having gotten out of the passenger side, twists his ankle and falls down. Officer Garmback gets out of the driver’s side of the vehicle.
0:20 – 1:40 :: Officer Loehmann literally stands behind the vehicle and massages his ankle for 80 seconds.
1:01 :: Officer Garmback can be seen using his radio to call dispatch.
NOTE :: Tamir Rice fought for his life in the hospital until the following day.
1:41 :: Tajai Rice, Tamir’s 14-year-old sister, who was in the restroom when the shooting happened, is seen running to him from the left side of the screen.
1:44 :: Tajai Rice is tackled by Officer Frank Garmback.
1:46 :: Officer Loehmann comes over to assist Garmback.
1:48 – 2:45 :: Officer Loehmann stands by Tamir but does nothing at all.
1:51 – 3:00 :: Garmback and a new officer attempt to subdue Rice’s 14-year-old sister, Tajai.
NOTE :: A cell phone video was just released from this exact point in time.
3:22 :: Apparently handcuffed, the police lock Rice’s sister, Tajai, in the back of the police car.
3:37 – 4:10 :: All three officers on the scene can be visibly witnessed just standing around, talking, away from Rice, as he fights for his life. None of them is remotely interested in him, nor do anything to care for him or offer any type of aid. His sister is locked in the car as he suffers alone.
4:01 :: A black sedan is seen pulling up. We later learn this is an FBI agent who was in the neighborhood and heard the call in his car.
4:07 :: The plain-clothes FBI agent walks briskly onto the scene, speaks quickly to the officers, and immediately goes to Rice.
4:17 :: The FBI agent crouches down to Rice and is not seen getting back up for several minutes.
In essence, the FBI agent did exactly what the officers on the scene, or any decent human being would’ve done. Zero rationale whatsoever exists that could ever explain why the Cleveland Police officers completely ignored Tamir Rice. He was a kid who was bleeding to death.
Imagine for a moment a scenario in which you would shoot someone in the stomach and ignore their well-being for four minutes. Did you do it? Now, could you think of doing such a thing to a person that you cared about or wanted to live? I didn’t think so.
7. After they shot Tamir Rice, lied about it, and ignored him as he fought to survive, police confirmed what they truly thought about this sweet boy in the days and weeks that followed. They called him a menace, stated that he looked like a man (the photo above was taken the month before he was killed), and that he caused his own death. In all of this, they have confirmed just how truly awful they are as people.
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Perhaps the only people who could look at these facts and determine that what happened to Tamir Rice was “reasonable” would be fellow law enforcement officers. In fact, the only person who was reasonable on that day was Tamir.