Not only did Sims overlook significant facts, Chandra said, he concluded that the officers feared for their lives without any statements from them.
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The Rice family attorney told RT that in soliciting these reports, McGinty attempted to “make opinion early to soften the blow” if and when the grand jury does not indict the officers. (Smith was unarmed and, according to witness testimony, only tangentially connected to a fight and a shooting that erupted out of a nearby bar that night.) In 2014, ruling the shooting “justified”, McGinty hailed Jones for “correctly and heroically [taking] action to protect the safety of the citizens of Cleveland”.
The grand jury will assess the reports while making their decision. “However, what is clear from the facts and needs no inference, is that her decisions created a very risky situation – not just to herself and to the officers, but also to her friends who were in the auto with her”.
“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 said.
Two other reports, by Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Lamar Sims and retired Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Kimberly Crawford, were commissioned as analysis about proper use of deadly force by police.
They also noted that they first learned about the reports via the media, as the Cuyahoga Country Prosecutor’s office released the reports to the press hours before providing them to the family.
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office reviewed the tape, said Joseph Frolik, a spokesman for the office.
Both experts were provided with surveillance video of the shooting that showed Loehmann firing at Tamir within two seconds after the police cruiser driven by his partner pulled up next to the boy. Not the prosecutor, apparently. “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”.
Officers are trained to scrutinize behavior for “telltale signs” of intent, she writes, then states that “the need to react quickly was imperative”. But each reviewer found that Loehmann had been placed in a volatile situation with minimal information and had acted reasonably in shooting Tamir.
“The grand jury’s function is not to exonerate or exculpate any individual”. In other words, the multitude of factors suggesting the cops should have refrained from shooting Rice add up to nothing. “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”.
The killing of Tamir has become part of a national outcry about minorities, especially black boys and men, dying during encounters with police. Tamir’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Cleveland Police Department, and his death has become a focal point of the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Cleveland is now carrying out its police reform agreement with the Justice Department to diversify its police force and bring in more African-Americans, Hispanics and women. That agreement was in the works before Tamir was killed.
