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A Grand Jury Just Decided Not to Indict the Cop Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

by JulieFalconer4 Posted on December 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update (3:08 p.m. ET, 12/28/2015): The family of Tamir Rice has issued the following statement:

On Monday, more than a year since 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police officer, a grand jury decided not to indict the cops involved, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said that despite “the perfect storm” of errors that day, those errors “did not constitute criminal conduct.”

On the afternoon of November 22, 2014, less than 10 minutes after a man called 911 to report a person in a park waving around what appeared to be a gun, Loehmann and his partner Garmback drove up directly in front of Rice, with Loehmann emerging from the patrol car and shooting the boy almost instantaneously. Surveillance footage showed the officers standing around for several minutes after the shooting without giving Rice, any kind of first aid or tending to his wounds. The boy died at a hospital the next day. The gun in Rice’s possession turned out to be a toy replica.

Monday’s decision emerges after more than a year of public controversy and investigations into the incident, first by the Cleveland police department and then by the Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office, which in July handed over its findings to McGinty. Beginning in October, McGinty released three independent reports assessing the legality of Loehmann’s and Garmback’s actions. The reports, written by experts tapped by the prosecutor, all appeared to absolve the officers of misconduct. Their release to the public long before the grand jury decision was unusual—grand jury proceedings are typically closed off to the public—and the move prompted Rice’s family and supporters to call for a special prosecutor to take over the case. Neither Loehmann nor Garmback ever spoke to investigators, as Mother Jones first reported in May, but in December the two officers released public statements for the first time since Rice’s death.

Here are the key events that led up to the grand jury decision:

November 22, 2014: A 911 caller tells a police dispatcher that a man who is “probably a juvenile” is waving around a gun that is “probably fake.” The call taker fails to relay those details in the dispatch computer system and codes the call a “priority 1.” A radio dispatcher requests officers to the scene. Tamir Rice is shot and killed within 10 minutes of the 911 call.

December 3, 2014: A report from the Cleveland Plain Dealer reveals that Loehmann’s personnel record showed the officer had a troubling history with handling guns in the past. According to reports by supervisors at the Independence Police Department—where Loehmann served a six-month stint in 2012 before joining the Cleveland police—he was “distracted” and “weepy” during firearms qualifications training. An Independence deputy police chief wrote that Loehmann “could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,” and recommended that the department part ways with him.

December 5, 2014: Rice’s family files a federal wrongful death suit against Loehmann, Garmback, and the city of Cleveland.

January 2015: The Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office takes over the city’s investigation into the shooting.

June 11, 2015: A Cleveland judge finds there is sufficient evidence to charge both Loehmann and Garmback, but leaves that decision up to the county prosecutor.

June 13, 2015: After five months, the county sheriff’s office releases the results of its probe. Loehmann and Garmback, as Mother Jones was the first to report, refused to speak with investigators despite multiple requests by investigators to interview them.

October 11, 2015: Cuyahoga County Prosecutor McGinty releases two reports that conclude Loehmann’s actions were “objectively reasonable” and constitutional, suggesting the investigation may not lead to charges. The two reports note that possible tactical errors made by the officers—such as whether Loehmann issued a warning before firing shots—are not relevant to the findings. The release of the reports stirs a public outcry and prompts Rice’s family and supporters to call for McGinty’s recusal from the grand jury process and for a special prosecutor to take over the case.

November 12, 2015: McGinty releases a third report that focuses on the potential mishandling of the 911 call and whether Garmback’s decision to drive the squad car to within feet of Rice contributed to the shooting. The report concludes that the 911 dispatcher and both officers’ actions were reasonable.

November 28, 2015: Two outside law enforcement experts, retained by the Rice family’s attorneys, conclude in their reports that Loehmann’s and Garmback’s actions were “reckless” and unjustifiable under the law. They challenge the three earlier reports released by the county prosecutor.

December 1, 2015: After a yearlong silence, Loehmann and Garmback release their written accounts of what happened on the day of the shooting. Their statements are made public through the county prosecutor. “I had very little time as I exited the vehicle,” Loehmann wrote of the moments before he fired two shots at Rice. “We are trained to get out of the cruiser because ‘the cruiser is a coffin.'” He added, “I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active.”

December 15, 2015: Rice’s family formally requests a Department of Justice investigation into the boy’s death and the prosecutor’s handling of the grand jury proceedings.

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A Grand Jury Just Decided Not to Indict the Cop Who Killed 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice

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Another Report Suggests the Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice May Not be Charged

by XNWBenjami Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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A newly released report examining the actions of the Cleveland police officers involved in the November 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice concludes that the call taker who handled a 911 call about Rice failed to relay significant details to the officers about the 12-year-old boy. The report also offers new information on why the officers pulled their car to within 10 feet of Rice, just seconds before he was fatally shot. And similar to two other reports made public from the ongoing grand jury investigation, it reaches a conclusion sure to continue stoking controversy about the case—that officer Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shots, made “the only objectively reasonable decision” possible in gunning down Rice point-blank.

More MoJo coverage on policing:


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How Cleveland Police May Have Botched a 911 Call Just Before Killing Tamir Rice


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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Why Police Accounts Are Hard to Trust


Itâ&#128;&#153;s Been 6 Months Since Tamir Rice Died, and the Cop Who Killed Him Still Hasn’t Been Questioned


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


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The independent analysis, released on Thursday afternoon by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, is part of ongoing grand jury deliberations on whether Loehmann should face criminal charges. It was authored by W. Ken Katsaris, a Florida police officer and training instructor tapped by the prosecutor’s office.

“The dispatcher should have provided additional information to the officers, including details that the ‘guy with the gun’ is ‘probably a juvenile,'” wrote Katsaris. He added that while the caller described the weapon as “‘probably a fake,’ he also clearly reported ‘I don’t know if it’s real or not.'” Yet Katsaris also notes that the call taker “did gather sufficient information from the caller and handled the call appropriately.”

The county sheriff’s investigation revealed in June that a call taker at the Cleveland police dispatch center entered the 911 caller’s information into a computer system and assigned it a “code one,” the highest priority emergency. But, as Mother Jones first reported in June, that call taker never entered the additional details about Rice probably being a juvenile and the uncertainty about his gun, and that information was not relayed by another dispatcher to the officers headed to the scene.

Katsaris says that while these additional details should have been provided to the officers, they “would not be very helpful to the officers in terms of decision making,” because they do not “in any way diminish the threat potential, and the statements about the firearm are far too ambiguous to be taken as relevant unless the circumstances were clearly different than this situation unfolded.” He concludes, “the only objectively reasonable decision to be made by Loehmann was to utilize deadly force and deploy his firearm.”

The report also focuses on the actions of officer Frank Garmback, who drove the squad car directly up to Rice: “It appears that the officers were heading for the area of the swings, where the ‘guy with the gun’ was last reported being seen.” When the officers instead spotted Rice under a nearby gazebo, this sighting “was not expected,” according to Katsaris, “causing Officer Garmback to apply the brakes suddenly, and hard, skidding for forty feet and ten inches.” Katsaris adds that “it is obvious to me, from the totality of the circumstances, that the vehicle stop position was not by choice, but by necessity.”

Policing experts including former officers have told Mother Jones that the officers’ actions leading up to the shooting of Rice was “a use of horrible tactics” and that they warrant further investigation.

Katsaris’s report marks the fourth one made public by county prosecutor McGinty. The release of various analysis ahead of a grand jury decision suggesting that the officers may not be charged has drawn criticism and prompted Rice’s family and supporters to demand a special prosecutor.

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Another Report Suggests the Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice May Not be Charged

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Outrage is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes Into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways.

by MariMacDonnell Posted on October 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update, 1:45 p.m. EDT: In the hours since two new investigations into the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice concluded that a Cleveland police officer’s actions were “reasonable,” outrage has spread on Twitter and protesters have taken to the streets. Some called on authorities to redefine what is legally “reasonable.”

Activists in Cleveland and elsewhere saw the reports as a sign that it’s unlikely Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann will face criminal charges for his actions. As demonstrations took place in cities such as Cleveland and Oakland, several high-profile figures weighed in:

Meanwhile, a police union attorney for Frank Garmback, the officer who drove the squad car near Rice before Loehmann opened fire, told Mother Jones Garmback has decided that he will not testify before the grand jury.

Garmback is still considering submitting a written statement to Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty, according to his lawyer Michael Maloney.

“While we are not facing a strict deadline at the moment, it is clear we have to advise the prosecutor of our intentions fairly soon,” he said. Maloney declined to comment further on questions about whether Loehmann will testify or submit a statement soon.

Previously:

Late on Saturday night, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office released conclusions from three additional investigations into the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer at a Cleveland park last November.

Two of the reports, written by police use-of-force experts, determined that the actions of Cleveland officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally wounded Rice within a few seconds of arriving at the scene on November 22, were “objectively reasonable” under federal case law and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. A third investigation reconstructed the shooting scene at the Cudell Recreation Center and examined how quickly the police car was moving when it pulled up to Rice.

Here are the key takeaways from the reports, and questions that remain almost a year since Rice’s death:

The fact that Rice was a kid, or that his gun turned out to be fake, are “irrelevant” in determining whether Loehmann’s actions were reasonable under federal law. According to use of force experts S. Lamar Sims and Kimberly Crawford, the available evidence shows Loehmann could not have known at the time of the shooting that Rice was a boy with a toy gun. Therefore Loehmann acted reasonably—as defined by previous US Supreme Court decisions—when he fired his weapon at Rice, Sims and Crawford concluded. And while key details in the 911 call—that Rice was “probably a juvenile” waving a gun that was “probably fake”—were not relayed to the officers, they “cannot be considered,” Crawford wrote.

Whether Loehmann and the officer who drove the squad car, Frank Garmback, used appropriate tactics also fell outside the scope of Sims and Crawford’s investigations, they said. Garmback pulled the police vehicle to within several feet of Rice, and Loehmann fired shots within two seconds.

“To suggest that Officer Garmback should have stopped the car at another location is to engage in exactly the kind of ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ the case law exhorts us to avoid,” Sims wrote. While it could be argued that the officers escalated the situation “by entering the park and stopping their vehicle so close to a potentially armed subject,” Crawford added, that speculation has “no place in determining the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force.”

The reports do not discuss the fact that Loehmann and Garmback did not administer first aid while Rice lay bleeding. Surveillance footage of the incident showed Loehmann and Garmback stood around for about four minutes without attempting to give any medical attention to Rice. When Rice’s sister approached, Garmback tackled her to the ground. Later, an FBI agent arrived and began to tend to Rice’s wound before an ambulance took him to a hospital. Rice died the next day.

A fundamental principle of policing is that once a threat has been eliminated and a scene secured, an officer’s first priority is to aid an injured person, Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina studying policing, told Mother Jones in May. “At that point, the officer and his medical kit might be the only thing between the suspect and death,” said Stoughton, who who previously served as a police officer in Florida for five years. “It’s not only an ethical requirement, but almost certainly a departmental imperative to do what they can to save the life of the suspect. The failure to do that is really disturbing.”

The officers still aren’t talking to investigators. Both Loehmann and Garmback have declined to give statements to investigators or the county prosecutor, under the advice of their lawyers. In June, their attorney Michael Maloney told Mother Jones that the officers “have not ruled out the possibility” of providing a written statement to the prosecutor. They have not decided whether they will testify before the grand jury.

It’s unclear whether Loehmann will face criminal charges. A total of four investigations have now been made public in the wake of Rice’s death, none of which are intended to draw conclusions about whether officer Loehmann should be charged. As county prosecutor Timothy McGinty explains, all reports will be reviewed by a grand jury, which will then determine whether Loehmann will face criminal charges.

The officer who drove the car may face scrutiny, too. Thus far, the investigation into Rice’s death has focused on Loehmann, and it remains unclear whether the actions of Garmback will warrant a separate criminal or departmental investigation.

Stoughton, the law enforcement expert, told Mother Jones, “It was a ludicrous way to approach a scene where you’ve been told that there is a person with a gun who has been aiming it at bystanders. I would expect the officers would park at a safe distance and walk up, using cover and concealment, and try to initiate communication at a distance. That’s the ‘three Cs’ of tactical response.”

It’s unclear when a grand jury will take up the case. The new documents, along with the initial probe into the shooting led by the county sheriff’s office, will be presented to a grand jury as it decides whether to indict Loehmann, McGinty said in Saturday’s press release. McGinty’s office declined to comment further on the grand jury process. It remains unclear whether a grand jury has been impaneled and when a hearing will take place.

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Outrage is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes Into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, ProPublica, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Outrage is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes Into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways.