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No indictments, but prosecutors cite mistakes in boy’s death
The family’s attorneys also said they are renewing their request for the Department of Justice to “step in to conduct a real investigation”.
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Legally, the prosecutor should have sought a court order to make the officers answer the questions or to hold them in contempt in case they continued to decline going through that step. It turned out to be a pellet gun.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) says the death of a 12-year-old boy shot by a Cleveland policeman is “a heartbreaking tragedy” and he understands it will leave many people asking whether justice was served. Rice had that toy gun when he was shot dead by Lohemann on a Cleveland playground in November 2014.
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association said in a statement, “While we will always have the utmost respect for the Criminal Justice system, we are pleased in the Grand Jury’s thoughtful decision”. He says Ohioans are starting to see a path of change, as he puts it, “so everyone shares in the safety and success they deserve”. “I have a right to be angry”, which serves to unite them, like a symphony warming up before a performance, though their songs and styles are diverse.
Just about two months ago, there was an incident after a football game at Madison Park High School in Roxbury not all that different from the call that had two Cleveland cops roll up on Tamir Rice. The family says the prosecutor’s handling of the process compounded their grief.
Family members released a statement Monday through their lawyer, accusing McGinty of “abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment”, the Associated Press reported.
Loehmann and Garmback’s legal issues haven’t ended with the grand jury decision. “This emphasis on his appearance-there’s no question he was large for a 12-year-old-it’s seen as nearly saying, ‘Well, that explains it'”.
It was “reasonable” to believe the officer who killed the boy believed Tamir was a threat, the prosecutor said, adding that the toy gun looked real.
Prosecutors said “Tamir was big for his age – 5-foot-7 and 175 pounds, with a men’s XL jacket and size-36 trousers – and could have easily passed for someone much older, “according to the Los Angeles Times”. The gun’s owner had warned Tamir about playing with it because of the possibility it could be mistaken for a real one.
Mr McGinty said Tamir was trying to either hand the weapon to police or show them it was not real, but the officer and his partner had no way of knowing that.
She also said, “It’s a very somber day here in Cleveland and it’s also a really disappointing day for a family, for the city, for activists in a community throughout the country who have consistently advocated for children, for people to be safe in this country”. But the 911 call taker didn’t relay that information to the dispatcher who gave the officers their high-priority radio assignment for what is known in police parlance as a “gun run”.
McGinty said that the shooting death of Rice did not meet the standard of a crime.
On Monday, a grand jury cleared Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback after finding a series of mistakes but no criminal activity, prosecutors said. Tamir was holding a pellet gun when he was killed. National Action Network has stood by Tamir’s family since the egregious killing that took young Tamir’s life and his mother joined us at a national march for police accountability a year ago in the nation’s capital.
Ohio Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge released a statement in response to the decision not to indict the officers in which she said that McGinty’s handling of the case “tainted the outcome”.
McGinty called the incident a “perfect storm of human error”. It is the result of a systematic, months-long whitewash of the murder by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty. It’s unclear even in an enhanced version of the video whether Rice was reaching for the gun or had his hand on it when Loehmann shot him.
There was no immediate comment from Loehmann after the decision was announced.
A grainy surveillance-camera video of the boy’s November 2014 shooting provoked outrage nationally, and together with other killings of black people by police in places such as Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, it helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.
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The full text of McGinty’s statement is here, and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office’s full report of Rice’s shooting appears here. Security footage from a nearby building shows within two seconds of their arrival, Tamir was shot.