Tamir Rice Whitewash Continues
Yesterday the Cleveland prosecutor’s office released two reports they commissioned on the shooting death of Tamir Rice last November. On a Saturday afternoon (gosh, it’s like they knew reaction would be negative).
Those opinions, reached separately by a Colorado prosecutor and a former F.B.I. supervisory special agent, were released Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will ultimately present evidence in the case to a grand jury to decide on possible criminal charges.
“The question is not whether every officer would have reacted the same way,” Kimberly A. Crawford, the retired F.B.I. agent, wrote in her report, which noted that Officer Loehmann had no way of knowing Tamir’s gun was fake. “Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether a reasonable officer, confronting the exact same scenario under identical conditions could have concluded that deadly force was necessary.”
Both Ms. Crawford and S. Lamar Sims, the prosecutor from Colorado, said in their reports that they were evaluating Officer Loehmann’s actions under the United States Constitution, not Ohio state law.
“I mean, why would an Ohio prosecutor want to know if Ohio state law was violated? That’s just crazy talk!”
“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Mr. Sims wrote. But he added that “Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat.”
“Sure, Tamir was an innocent 12 year-old, but let’s not overlook the fact he was also a SCARY BLACK PERSON!!!!!”
Tamir’s death resulted in a lengthy series of investigations that have frustrated some activists, who see the shooting as a clear case of police overreach and have called for the arrests of Officer Loehmann and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, who drove his police cruiser to within feet of Tamir but who did not fire his weapon. Some have criticized Officer Garmback for parking his cruiser so close.
“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,” Mr. Sims wrote.
“I mean, we can’t go around judging people’s actions after they happen! What kind of world would that be?”
Mr. McGinty provided no timeline of when a grand jury would decide on charges, but said more reports had been commissioned by his office and would be released as they were finished.
“Look, it took us 11 months just to find “experts” willing to justify killing a 12 year-old. Give us some time!”