Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in a statement his office – which commissioned the expert reports – was not reaching any conclusions based on them.
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The Rice family and Clevelanders have always said that they want the officers who rushed upon and killed 12-year-old Tamir held accountable. A lawyer for the boy’s family, however, says the outside reports finding that the shooting was justified show that prosecutors are avoiding accountability.
Chandra said if McGinty does not advocate for Tamir while presenting the case to a grand jury, the process will become a “charade”. An audio recording released by police indicated that the caller had said the gun was probably fake and the person might be an adolescent.
McGinty claims that he released the reports in the interest of transparency. To get so-called experts to assist in the whitewash-when the world has the video of what happened-is all the more alarming.
Surveillance video shows the officer opening fire on Rice within seconds of arriving on the scene.
Retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Kimberly Crawford, in a review of the shooting, wrote that “not only was Officer [Timothy] Loehmann required to make a split-second decision, but also that his response was a reasonable one”.
“It is my conclusion that Officer Loehmann’s use of deadly force falls within the realm of reasonableness under the dictates of the Fourth Amendment”, Ms Crawford wrote, though she noted she was not issuing an opinion as to whether he broke Ohio law or department policy.
Lamar Sims, the chief deputy district attorney in Denver, said Loehmann was “in a position of great peril” because he was within feet of Rice, who appeared armed as he approached the patrol vehicle and reached toward his waistband.
(Cleveland): The family of Tamir Rice responded to documents released over the weekend that sites two independent legal experts stating that the actions by police in the shooting of Tamir Rice were “reasonable”. “They were responding to a situation fraught with the potential for violence to citizens”. Loehmann jumped from the auto and shot Tamir nearly immediately.
“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”. Rice’s gun shot plastic pellets but lacked coloring or markings clearly designating it a toy.
Rice was black while the officer who shot him is white, and the case is one in a series of high-profile deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement which have raised questions about the use of force by police.
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That agreement was in the works before Tamir was killed.
