A judge on Thursday said that enough evidence exists to charge two policemen in the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy who was holding a pellet gun, a largely symbolic ruling because he cannot compel prosecutors to charge them.
Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine ruled that there is probable cause to charge rookie officer Timothy Loehmann with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide or dereliction of duty in the shooting death of Tamir Rice in November last year. And he ruled there is evidence to charge Loehmann’s partner, Frank Garmback, with reckless homicide or dereliction of duty.
The judge made his ruling after activists submitted affidavits asking the court to rule that there is enough evidence to charge the officers in Tamir’s death.
Photo: AFP
“This court reaches its conclusions consistent with the facts in evidence and the standard of proof that applies at this time,” the judge wrote.
The killing of Tamir has become part of a national outcry about minorities — especially black boys and men — dying while in police custody. Cleveland and the US Department of Justice are moving forward on a reform-minded consent decree after a department investigation found Cleveland police had engaged in a practice of using excessive force and violating people’s rights.
The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department recently completed its investigation and gave its file to the county prosecutor, whose staff is reviewing the case while preparing to take it to a grand jury to determine if criminal charges should be filed.
Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said on Thursday that this case, like all other fatal use-of-deadly-force cases involving law enforcement officers, would go to a grand jury.
“Ultimately, the grand jury decides whether police officers are charged or not charged,” he said.
The judge wrote in his ruling that a video of the shooting of Tamir captured by a surveillance camera is “notorious and hard to watch.”
The video, which was released shortly after the shooting, shows Loehmann shooting Tamir in the abdomen within two seconds of a police cruiser driven by Garmback skidding to a stop near the boy.
The judge said he watched the video several times and was “thunderstruck” by how quickly the encounter turned deadly.
“There appears to be little if any time reflected on the video for Rice to react or respond to any verbal or audible comments,” he wrote.
A Rice family attorney, Walter Madison, said the judge’s ruling on Thursday was “historic.”
“I think it’s a blueprint for the rest of the nation with respect to citizen participation,” Madison said. “They’re able to participate through engagement. They can witness the transparency. A transparency leads to legitimacy.”
Police officials have said Loehmann ordered Tamir three times to put up his hands before he shot the boy. A former police union official said officers had no way of knowing Tamir was carrying an airsoft gun that only looked like a real firearm.
The officers had responded to an emergency call reporting that a man was pointing and waving a gun at a playground outside a recreation center. The caller said the gun might not be real, but that information was not relayed to the officers.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.