Thursday, March 28, 2024

No Charges for Cleveland Cops in Tamir Rice Case

Tamir Rice
Tamir Rice

*An Ohio Grand Jury has declined to indict Cleveland police officers in the death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old African American boy who was shot dead by an officer last year, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said today.

The grand jury completed the investigation today and recommended that no charges be filed, McGinty said.

Tamir was holding a toy gun when he was shot by officer Timothy Loehmann at a Cleveland playground in November 2014.

The grand jury was hearing evidence to determine if any charges would be brought against Loehmann or his partner.

Timothy Loehmann
Timothy Loehmann

Rice was holding a pellet gun when he was shot. It was “reasonable” to believe that the officer who killed the boy was facing a threat, McGinty said.

Kimberly Crawford, a 20-year veteran of the FBI and a former instructor at the agency’s academy, writes that when the officers approached Tamir they were responding to a report of a male suspect with a gun he kept pulling from his pants.

“The after-acquired information — that the individual was 12 years old, and the weapon in question was an ‘airsoft gun’– is not relevant to a constitutional review of Officer Loehmann’s actions,” she writes in one of the other reports posted Saturday.

She says Loehmann was required to make a threat assessment and a split-second decision on whether to shoot.

“His response was a reasonable one,” she writes.

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