Frustrated by a series of reports commissioned by Cleveland prosecutors that conclude the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice was justified, attorneys for the boy’s family released reports it commissioned that say deadly force shouldn’t have been used. These new reports are at odds with three previously released by prosecutors that found the incident to have been “tragic” but “reasonable”. Grand jurors are expected to consider all those reports in deciding whether the police should face criminal charges.
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Tamir was shot by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann after he and another officer responded to a report of a man with a gun outside a recreation center on November 22, 2014.
Jeffrey Noble, deputy chief of the Irvine and Westminster, California, police departments and Robert Clark, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy chief, called Rice’s shooting unjustified, unreasonable and inconsistent with police practices. Although Ohio is an open-carry state, the earlier reports nevertheless concluded that Officer Loehmann reasonably feared for his life.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said in a statement that the new footage was released in the “spirit of openness”. It uses metadata from the surveillance video to establish the timeline of events.he Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office today has released a sequenced video enhancement that shows the timeline of events immediately before and after the shooting of Tamir Rice. Prosecutors have not said when grand jurors will decide whether to indict. This process is a wide open search for the truth. On Saturday, Mr. McGinty released enhanced still images from surveillance cameras showing the encounter frame by frame, including Tamirs movements as police arrived, Officer Loehmanns quick exit from the cruiser, the gunshots and the aftermath of the shooting.
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Loehmann shot Rice twice within seconds of reaching the park in response to a 911 call reporting a man waving a gun. The caller told the dispatcher that the gun might not be real.
