McGinty said Loehmann was justified in firing: “He had reason to fear for his life”.
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The city of Cleveland is conducting an administrative review and will continue to pursue disciplinary charges against the officers involved.
And, though some protesters gathered, all remained calm in downtown Cleveland and at the Cudell Recreation Center, the west-side park where Rice was killed. The weapon turned out to be a pellet gun.
“While there is absolutely no upside to this issue”, he said in a statement, “there are lessons that should and will be learned by all”.
For the Rice family, the shooting and the subsequent investigation was symptomatic of much more than a “perfect storm of human error”.
Also, the Cleveland police department reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department earlier this year to overhaul the way it uses force and deals with the public.
The two officers involved, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, felt “relieved,” according to their union and their lawyers. Chicago police also say they accidentally killed a mother of 5 in the gunfire. The officers involved in the shooting were white and Rice was black.
“We have made progress to improve the way communities and police work together in our state, and we’re beginning to see a path to positive change so everyone shares in the safety and success they deserve”.
In fact, victim’s family has claimed that they might have been “disappointed” by the outcome but they were not “surprised”.
They accused Mr McGinty of “abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment”.
One, Art Blakey, from Cleveland, said: “There never has been any justice in these police murders”.
A protest over the grand jury’s decision not to indict two white Cleveland police officers in the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice has grown to about 100 people. Jackson said the city will begin an internal review to determine whether the officers should be disciplined for their roles in the killing.
The Cleveland, Ohio boy was shot twice while playing with a pellet gun in a park back in November 2014. Typically there is a warning on the packaging indicating that removing the orange tip of the gun “is unsafe, may cause confusion, may be mistaken to be a real firearm by law enforcement officers or others and may be a crime”.
Several witnesses the prosecutors said were interviewed described seeing the boy throughout the day, removing the toy gun that a friend had given to him from his waistband and pointing it at people.
Prosecutors pointed to an enhanced version of surveillance video footage which McGinty called “indisputable” evidence that Tamir was pulling the replica gun from his waistband as Loehmann jumped from then his cruiser with his gun drawn.
The call-taker didn’t relay that information to the dispatcher who sent Loehmann and Garmback to the recreation center.
Fox Business host Charles Payne argued on Monday that police officers should be able to do their jobs without “ridicule” because incidents like the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice were “going to happen”.
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Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty urged people who disagree with the grand jury to keep protests peaceful.
