I watched the press conference of the Cleveland Mayor, Frank Jackson, and the police chief, Calvin Williams-who happens to be black-and thought they did a pretty good job. Despite no charges against Rice there will be a review and if those involved acted wrongly they will be disciplined accordingly.
Will this mollify public outrage? No. There are too many problems with the picture.
"On November 22, 2014, Tamir Rice was throwing snowballs and playing with a toy pellet gun in a Cleveland park when a police car rolled into the snowy field. Within two seconds of getting out of his squad car, officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed the 12-year-old. The officer has claimed he thought the pellet gun was a real firearm."
"On Monday, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced there will be no criminal charges filed against the officers involved. McGinty said that while there was evidence of miscommunication between a 911 dispatcher and the police officers, there was not enough evidence to suggest that the cops had cleared the very high bar for criminal charges in police shooting cases. Ultimately, a grand jury decided to file no charges, as McGinty said he recommended."
For one thing , McGinty hardly acted like a prosecutor-he sounded like Loehmann's defense attorney. Yet his is very common when prosecutors are forced to go after cops-they usually end up sounding like the police defense attorney.
The obvious solution here is to no longer have these cases tried with a local prosecutor-who fears going after the police he or she needs to work with on a daily basis-but an independent counsel. That's what Eric Schneiderman did in NY.
So this is where they should start in Cleveland. I do believe that Loehmann legitimately perceived a threat.
"The FBI agent at the scene, Loehmann, and Garmback thought Rice —who was 5-foot-7-inches and 195 pounds — was an older teenager or in his 20s. "Shots fired, male down, black male, maybe 20," said the officer who called in the shooting, according to BuzzFeed's Mike Hayes."
"It's not uncommon for police to overestimate the age and size of black boys. Various studies have found that the general public and police tend to see them as less innocent and older. For police officers, this can result in overestimating them as a threat."
Right but 5 foot 7 195 pounds is pretty large, and they saw him in a shaded, foggy area, without good light. And in any case, young kids in this day and age often kill other young kids. A 12 year old kid with a real gun is not unheard of.
What's more I have to admit that when I saw the gun on tv yesterday it looked pretty real to me. When I first heard of this story I had envisaged a plastic shiny gun that was obviously fake. This was not that. I do think it's fair to say that parents should tell their children not to ever point a fake gun at the police. This is not by along shot the first time this has happened.
However, Loehmann and Garmback wrongly endangered themselves by driving in so closely and putting themselves in a position of having to shoot themselves out of it.
And Loehmann has the sort of history that makes you wonder why he was o the job at all:
"A police officer who shot a 12-year-old dead in a Cleveland park late last month had been judged unfit for police service two years earlier by a small suburban force where he worked for six months, according to records released on Wednesday."
"Officer Timothy Loehmann, who killed Tamir Rice on 22 November, was specifically faulted for breaking down emotionally while handling a live gun. During a training episode at a firing range, Loehmann was reported to be "distracted and weepy" and incommunicative. "His handgun performance was dismal," deputy chief Jim Polak of the Independence, Ohio, police department wrote in an internal memo."
"The memo concludes with a recommendation that Loehmann be "released from the employment of the City of Independence". Less than a week later, on 3 December 2012, Loehmann resigned."
"Other records reported by Cleveland.com's Andrew Tobias showed Loehmann failed the written entrance exam for the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department. He also reportedly failed to get hired at police departments in Akron, Euclid, and Parma Heights."
"City officials said they weren't aware of Loehmann's troubled history at other police departments when they hired him."
So that's the first question the investigation should answer: why were city officials unaware of such a troubled history? Isn't this just gross malpractice in terms of their vetting practices for someone who is going to be carrying a gun among the general public?
What's more the Cleveland police department itself has a rather troubled history:
"A federal investigation found Cleveland police are poorly trained and inappropriately violent."
"A Department of Justice investigation, which didn't look at the Rice shooting, found Cleveland police officers used excessive deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons; unnecessary, excessive, and retaliatory force, including Tasers, chemical sprays, and their fists; and excessive force against people with mental illness or in crisis, including one situation in which officers were called exclusively to check up on someone's well-being."
"Police officers also used "poor and dangerous tactics" that often put them "in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable and places officers and civilians at unnecessary risk," according to the report."
"The Justice Department attributed many of these problems to inadequate training and supervision."
"Supervisors tolerate this behavior and, in some cases, endorse it," the report said. "Officers report that they receive little supervision, guidance, and support from the Division, essentially leaving them to determine for themselves how to perform their difficult and dangerous jobs."
So the question for the department is when are they going to respond to this report and make some changes?
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