The Cleveland police officer responsible in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice will not face charges, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office announced on Monday afternoon, the New York Times reports.
The decision signals the end of a lengthy investigation after the incident rocked the nation last month when the young boy was gunned down seconds after officers arrived on the scene.
Tamir, who was black, was carrying a fake gun outside of a local recreation center when somone called 911. The caller cautioned that the gun was “probably fake” and that Tamir was likely very young, but that information was reportedly never given to responding officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty called the shooting “a perfect storm of human error,” but said that no actual crime had been committed. McGinty said, according to the Times, that it was “indisputable” that Tamir was drawing the pellet gun from his waistband when he was fatally wounded, either to show officers that it was not a real weapon, or to give it over. However, McGinty acknowledged, there was no way for officers to know so.
Appearing on MSNBC, Family attorney Earl Ward said that Tamir’s mom, Samaria Rice was “devastated” by the grand jury decision, having “wanted justice” for her son. The family is pursuing a civil case, but Rice “wanted accountability,” for the death of her little boy.
“It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” the Rice family attorneys said in a statement issued shortly after the announcement, according to the Washington Post.
“Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified. It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire “experts” to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation.”
The official investigation into the young boy’s death took more than a year. The county sheriff’s office took over for the police department and then the prosecutor’s office conducted its own investigation after the sheriff’s office finished up it’s investigation. McGinty, the Times notes, ended up releasing a redacted version of the sheriff’s investigation months ago, and in the months leading up to this decision published three independent reports by analysts who concluded that Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fired the fatal shots, acted reasonably.
As the Times notes, McGinty’s commissioning of the reports led to blistering criticism from Tamir’s family.
Read more at the New York Times and the Washington Post.
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