Tamir Rice 12-31-2020

 

31, December 2020                      Tamir Rice

Last Tuesday, the United States Justice Department announced they would not be pursuing criminal charges against the two officers involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, citing insufficient evidence. Oh really? Does it really take a Perry Mason to determine the identity of the killers?

Rice would have graduated from high school in 2020 if he were still alive. The tragedy has been a major lynchpin in the Black Lives Matter movement over the course of the past several years. Dialing back to the fateful day, - on November 22 2014, a 911 caller reported seeing a young boy waving what appeared to be a toy gun. Officer Timothy Loehmann shot Tamir within two seconds after his police cruiser pulled up in front of the boy. Neither Loehmann nor his partner, Frank Garmback administered first aid to save the boy’s life. They then handcuffed Tamir’s 14-year-old sister and threw her to the ground as she ran to her at brother’s side, callously leaving the boy to die. Incredulously, an Ohio grand jury returned a decision not to indict.

What was omitted during the trial was Timothy Loehmann’s resignation from another police force after a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training. It is an absolute travesty that police officers who responded made no attempt to assess the situation for themselves but only saw the boy’s skin color and toy gun as a danger to the community which required the use of maximum lethal force. Tamir’s death has become another alarming statistic of a criminal justice system that continues to offer blanket impunity to police officers for their actions when confronting African-Americans. It appears that the prosecutor deliberately cherry-picked the jury and what amounts to gross prosecutorial misconduct recommended a non-indictment.

Other experts did find probable cause, including a municipal court judge who recommended Loehmann be charged with murder, manslaughter and reckless homicide.

Rice and scores of other blacks have had the gross misfortune of being born in America where we only give lip service to the value of human life. ”All men are NOT created equal and it is NOT self-evident especially to many law enforcement officers who only see skin color before taking lethal action.