An expert commissioned by the OH prosecutor investigating last year’s fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice called the killing “objectively reasonable” in a report issued Thursday.
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Retired Florida police officer W. Ken Katsaris is the third expert who has concluded that patrolman Timothy Loehmann was justified in shooting Tamir Rice outside a Cleveland recreation center November 22, 2014.
Katsaris writes the officers couldn’t wait to see if the gun was real or a realistic-looking replica. Katsaris is the third police expert to come to that conclusion.
The clergy letter addresses reports such as the one released by the prosecutor’s office Thursday – calling them “favorable to the police officers”. Katsaris found it was justified and the judge acquitted Brelo.
“Regrettably, with the release of yet another utterly biased and shamelessly misguided ‘expert report, ‘ the county prosecutor is making clear his intention to protect the police from accountability under the criminal laws, rather than diligently prosecute them”, Jonathan Abady said.
Recent public comments from McGinty “add to the growing sentiment that the manner in which the Rice case has proceeded is tainted with bias at the worst and poorly handled at the minimum”, Rev. Jawanza Colvin said, speaking at Olivet Baptist Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.
“A series of factors pertaining to the Rice case in particular lead us to conclude that public trust in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office’s ability to conduct its role as a representative of the people’s interest has been significantly compromised”, the group wrote in a letter to McGinty.
In a statement Thursday, McGinty clarified his remarks, saying that he was responding not to Rice’s mother, Samaria, but to a civil attorney’s “inflammatory attacks on the grand jury process”. McGinty on Thursday released more footage of the shooting captured at a different angle farther away.
Attorneys for the Rice family are opposed to the release of the expert reports and have called for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty to step aside and allow a special prosecutor to take over the case.
Police officials had previously stated that Loehmann yelled three times at Tamir to raise his hands. The reports said Loehmann acted reasonably by firing as Tamir appeared to reach toward his waistband because he didn’t know Rice was 12 and that the weapon was a pellet gun.
Rice was shot two seconds after Loehmann and a second officer arrived at a park where a 911 caller reported seeing a black man pointing a gun at people.
The issue of the “possible fake” gun, and whether the officers were given that information or not, is also not relevant.
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“It is simply obvious that the officers had a reasonable belief that Rice was armed”.
