A white Cleveland police officer was justified in fatally shooting a black 12-year-old boy holding a pellet gun moments after pulling up beside him, according to two outside reviews conducted at the request of the prosecutor investigating the death.
A retired FBI agent and a Denver prosecutor both found the rookie patrolman who shot Tamir Rice exercised a reasonable use of force because he had reason to perceive the boy — described in an emergency call as a man waving and pointing a gun — as a serious threat.
The reports were released on Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors’ Office, which asked for the outside reviews as it presents evidence to a grand jury that is set to determine whether Timothy Loehmann is to be charged over Tamir’s death in November last year.
Photo: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
The killing of Tamir has become part of a national outcry about minorities — especially black boys and men — dying during encounters with police.
“We are not reaching any conclusions from these reports,” Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in a statement. “The gathering of evidence continues and the grand jury will evaluate it all.”
He said the reports, which included a technical reconstruction by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, were released in the interest of being “as public and transparent as possible.”
A lawyer for the Rice family, Subodh Chandra, said the release of the reports shows the prosecutor is avoiding accountability, which is what the family seeks.
“It is now obvious that the prosecutors’ office has been on a 12-month quest to avoid providing that accountability,” Chandra said, adding that the prosecutors’ office did not provide his office or the Rice family with the details of the reports.
“To get so-called experts to assist in the whitewash — when the world has the video of what happened — is all the more alarming,” he said. “Who will speak for Tamir before the grand jury? Not the prosecutor, apparently.”
Both experts were provided with surveillance video of the shooting that showed Loehmann firing at Tamir within two seconds after the police cruiser driven by his partner pulled up next to the boy. Police said the officers were responding to a call about a man with a gun, but were not told the caller said the gun could be a fake and the man an adolescent.
The report, prepared by retired FBI agent Kimberly Crawford, concluded that Loehmann’s use of force did not violate Tamir’s constitutional rights, saying the only facts relevant to such a determination are those the patrolman had at the time he fired his weapon.
“Loehmann had no information to suggest the weapon was anything but a real handgun, and the speed with which the confrontation progressed would not give the officer time to focus on the weapon,” Crawford wrote.
“It is my conclusion that officer Loehmann’s use of deadly force falls within the realm of reasonableness under the dictates of the Fourth Amendment,” she wrote.
Denver chief deputy district attorney Lamar Sims also concluded that Loehmann’s actions were reasonable based on statements from witnesses and a reconstruction of what happened that day.
Sims said the officers had no idea if the pellet gun was a real gun when they arrived and that Loehmann was in a position of great peril because he was within meters of Tamir as the boy approached the cruiser and reached toward his waistband.
“[The experts] dodge the simple fact that the officers rushed Tamir and shot him immediately without assessing the situation in the least,” Chandra said.
The pellet gun Tamir was holding shoots non-lethal plastic projectiles, but its orange markings had been removed.
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