He was known as a boisterous, friendly boy. At school, where he had a good attendance record, Tamir was often in trouble, classmates said, mainly for his pranks: He was deft with a whoopee cushion and liked to reseal his empty milk carton to tempt the unsuspecting.
Deonte Goldsby, 21, a relative, said Tamir, the youngest of four, would take care of his smaller cousins at family gatherings, chasing them or playing with their action figures and dolls. With adults, he was well-mannered, using ma’am and sir and offering to fetch sodas from the refrigerator.
Cudell Commons … was the geographic center of his daily life. The park is flanked on one side by the recreation center where Tamir, who stood 5-foot-7, played basketball, boasting, “You can’t check me!” when he scored. On the other side stood his school, Marion C. Seltzer Elementary, where the calendar is printed in five languages and the bulletin boards teach children to distinguish stereotypes from reality (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 11).
CLEVELAND — It began with a swap: one boy’s cellphone for another’s replica of a Colt pistol.
One of the boys went to play in a nearby park, striking poses with the lifelike, airsoft-style gun, which fired plastic pellets. He threw a snowball, settled down at a picnic table and flopped his head onto his arms in a perfect assertion of preteen ennui, a grainy security video shows.
Then, with the gun tucked away, he walked to the edge of the gazebo. He might have been wandering aimlessly, or he might have been attracted by the sight of a squad car barreling across the lawn.
Seconds later, the boy lay dying from a police officer’s bullet. “Shots fired, male down,” one of the officers in the car called across his radio. “Black male, maybe 20, black revolver, black handgun by him. Send E.M.S. this way, and a roadblock.”
But the boy, Tamir Rice, was only 12. Now, with the county sheriff’s office reviewing the shooting, interviews and recently released video and police records show how a series of miscommunications, tactical errors and institutional failures by the Cleveland police cascaded into one irreversible mistake.
…
Because of multiple layers in Cleveland’s 911 system, crucial information from the initial call about “a guy in here with a pistol” was never relayed to the responding police officers, including the caller’s caveats that the gun was “probably fake” and that the wielder was “probably a juvenile.”
What the officers, Frank Garmback and his rookie partner, Tim Loehmann, did hear from a dispatcher was, “We have a Code 1,” the department’s highest level of urgency.
When the officers raced into action, they took a shortcut that pointed their squad car straight into the park, pulling up so close to Tamir that it made it difficult to take cover, or to use verbal persuasion or other tactics suggested by the department’s use-of-force policy.
Within two seconds of the car’s arrival, Officer Loehmann shot Tamir in the abdomen from point-blank range, raising doubts that he could have warned the boy three times to raise his hands, as the police later claimed.
And when Tamir’s 14-year-old sister came running up minutes later, the officers, who are white, tackled her to the ground and put her in handcuffs, intensifying later public outrage about the boy’s death. When his distraught mother arrived, the officers also threatened to arrest her unless she calmed down, the mother, Samaria Rice, said.
Officers Garmback and Loehmann did not check Tamir’s vital signs or perform first aid in the minutes after he was shot. But Officer Garmback frantically requested an emergency medical team at least seven times, urging the dispatcher to “step it up” and to send medical workers from a fire station a block away. It would be eight minutes before they arrived.
The shooting fit into a broader history of dysfunction at the Cleveland Division of Police. Two weeks after Tamir’s death, the Justice Department released a scathing report accusing the department of a pattern of excessive force for which officers were rarely disciplined, and pressed the department to accept a federal monitor. Just a year before, in 2013, an investigation by the state attorney general found “systemic failure” in the department.
It also highlighted shortcomings in the department’s vetting process for recruits. Police records show that Officer Loehmann was hired without a review of his file at a previous department, where he resigned after suffering a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training.
The Cleveland police department and mayor’s office declined to comment for this article (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 1-9).
Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, defended Loehmann a few months after the shooting saying, “Tamir Rice is in the wrong. He’s menacing. He’s 5-foot-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body” (McGraw 4).
For Cleveland residents, the shooting highlighted another longstanding problem: The department’s community policing programs had been whittled down to a token effort, a result of cuts a decade earlier that might well have made a life-or-death difference to Tamir. A sign on a telephone pole yards from where he was shot down still advertises a police mini-station in the nearby recreation center where he played basketball. The station is long gone.
“If there was one there,” Councilman Jeffrey Johnson said, “he would have known Tamir, because Tamir was a regular, and he would have heard the call and gone out there and said, ‘Tamir, what are you doing’” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 10)?
The 911 caller was calm, pausing to exchange pleasantries with the dispatcher before getting to the point: A male in Cudell Commons was pointing a pistol at people and scaring them. The gun was “probably fake,” he said twice before signing off, and its wielder was “probably a juvenile” (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 13).
The dispatcher who told police that a male outside of a Cleveland recreation center had a gun, but failed to tell police that the caller thought the gun might be fake, has resigned.
…
A 911 caller told [Beth] Mandl, "It's probably fake, but you know what, it's scaring" me. That message was not relayed to the responding officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback.
Loehmann, who shot Tamir moments after exiting his patrol car, has said that Tamir reached for the gun before he opened fire.
He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do," Loehmann told a fellow officer in the moments after he shot Tamir … (Police 1).
Officer Garmback, 46, who had joined the force in 2008, was at a nearby church when the call came. With him was his partner, Officer Loehmann, 26, hired just eight months before.
Officer Loehmann had grown up in Parma, a largely white suburb of Cleveland, but he commuted 30 minutes to an all-male, Roman Catholic high school on the city’s east side, Benedictine, where many of the students were minorities.
People who knew Officer Loehmann there recalled him as quiet and serious, active in the band and the German Club. The Rev. Gerard Gonda, the school’s president, said Mr. Loehmann had a solid record at Benedictine, where as a junior he was in Father Gonda’s theology class. “He had a very low-key personality, and I would say kind of a gentle personality,” Father Gonda said.
Officer Loehmann had long wanted to emulate his father, Frederic, who served in the New York Police Department for 20 years before becoming a federal marshal. So in 2011, he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and sociology from Cleveland State University, according to his personnel file, and the next year, he went to work for the police in Independence, Ohio.
But there, according to police records, he had emotional problems related to a girlfriend. At a shooting range, he was “distracted and weepy,” a supervisor said. One of his supervisors concluded that Officer Loehmann “would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions,” during stressful situations. After six months, the department allowed him to resign.
Officer Loehmann stayed in the Cleveland area, where he took private security jobs. He continued to apply for local law enforcement jobs but was not hired until the Cleveland police gave him a chance, in March 2014. The department never reviewed his Independence personnel file.
Officer Loehmann did well, graduating from the Cleveland Police Academy with a score of 98.8. He was assigned to a district on Cleveland’s west side, which included the poor, blighted neighborhood around Cudell Commons (Dewan and Oppel Jr 13-16).
By the time Officer Loehmann was hired, the department was already struggling with a host of problems that had begun at least a decade before.
In 2004, city leaders laid off 250 officers to help close a budget gap. That trimmed the force 15 percent, to about 1,500 officers, seriously hurting community policing and closing mini-stations.
Over the next two years, the city’s violent crime rate leapt by double digits. It has since declined from that peak, but the city is still more violent than it was in 2004, according to F.B.I. data, even as violent crime has continued to drop across Ohio and the country.
As the police department was shrinking, it came under increasing criticism for excessive use of force. The Justice Department began an investigation prompted by police shootings that led to an agreement in 2004 calling for the city to tighten its guidelines for the use of force and to improve its documentation of those incidents. But many reforms were not maintained, according to the recent Justice Department report.
Episodes of abuse continued to surface. In 2011, a helicopter video captured police officers kicking Edward Henderson in the head even though he was spread-eagled on the ground. None of the officers admitted to wrongdoing, and none were fired, though the video showed them “kicking his head like a football,” said David Malik, a prominent civil rights lawyer who won a $600,000 settlement for Mr. Henderson, who suffered a broken facial bone.
Mr. Malik said the city’s discipline and arbitration system heavily favored officers, making it difficult to punish misconduct. “It’s a culture of no consequences,” said Mr. Malik, who has filed or investigated potential lawsuits against the Cleveland police on more than 100 occasions.
Nearly two years after the assault on Mr. Henderson, more than 60 police cruisers and one-third of the city’s on-duty force engaged in a high-speed chase after officers mistook a car’s backfiring for gunfire. It ended when officers killed the two unarmed occupants by firing 137 rounds into their vehicle.
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The deadly chase also spurred calls for a new Justice Department investigation. Released in December, that study found a pattern of excessive force, suggesting that the police were often hostile with residents and were rarely held accountable for misconduct.
“Officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers’ commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all,” the report said.
Cleveland and the Justice Department have agreed to work toward a consent decree that would tighten use-of-force policies and subject the department to oversight by a monitor (Dewan and Oppel Jr. 17-18).
The Justice Department announced it found insufficient evidence to "support federal criminal charges against Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback."
In a statement released Tuesday, the department said it notified Rice's family attorneys about the decision on Monday "and today [December 29, 2020] sent a letter to Mr. Rice's family explaining the findings of the investigation and reasons for the decision."
...
In December 2015, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Loehmann and Garmback.
In its statement Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers "repeatedly and consistently stated that Officer Loehmann gave Tamir multiple commands to show his hands before shooting, and both officers repeatedly and consistently said that they saw Tamir reaching for his gun."
"Based on this evidence and the high burdens of the applicable federal laws, career prosecutors have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tamir did not reach for his toy gun; thus, there is insufficient evidence to establish that Officer Loehmann acted unreasonably under the circumstances," the department said.
The statement noted Loehmann and Garmback were the only two witnesses in the near vicinity of the shooting.
Loehmann was fired nearly three years after Rice's death for lying on his application to the Cleveland police (Romo 1-2).
[Afterward, Loehmann tried to secure another law enforcement job]
The Cleveland police officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside a recreation center four years ago backed out of a part-time job with another Ohio police department days after he was hired.
Richard Flanagan, the police chief for the Bellaire Police Department in Ohio, confirmed that Timothy Loehmann had withdrawn his application as a part-time officer.
"I have accepted his withdrawal from the Bellaire police department," Flanagan said in a statement to NBC affiliate WKYC3. "The pressures of all of this. He's been through enough the last couple years. He cared about the community here. He didn't want no protests, no violence, nothing of that nature."
A call by NBC News to the Ballaire Police Department was not returned.
During a news conference on Wednesday, Rice's mother, Samaria, and members of Black Lives Matter said "thousands" of people had contacted the police department to protest the hiring (Burke 1).
In her own words, Samaria recounts her emotional journey and shares her opinions that have been shaped by her life-changing loss.
People used to joke and say my son was going to be with me until he was 35 years old. They probably would have been right. He was mommy’s baby.
Tamir had just turned 12 years old and was transitioning from playing with Legos to playing video games and becoming a teen.
As a single parent and his dad not really being around, Tamir was very attached to me. He would give me hugs and kisses. He was able to keep the family laughing and basically kept us glued together.
He went from one activity to the next. He really enjoyed soccer. He enjoyed football. He enjoyed basketball as well. He liked to draw, too. He was part of the art program. He liked his school, for the most part. I would say he liked science and reading. I was able to expose him to the things that I wasn't exposed to. I put him in mentoring and tutoring. I really tried to keep him out of trouble by keeping him busy.
He was loving and caring but he was a jokester -- definitely a ladies’ man.
If Tamir was alive, he’d probably be doing something with sports. That little boy was so athletic at an early age. I'm not sure what kind of athlete he would have been. We didn't really have a chance to have a lot of those conversations. He would be 18 and have graduated high school by now.
That day Tamir was murdered I received a knock at the door and it was a neighborhood kid saying my son had been shot by police. I said, "What are you talking about?" I was in denial and shock.
As I arrived on the scene, my 14-year-old was in the back of a police car. Tamir was laying on the pavement in a gazebo with police surrounding him. My 16-year-old was surrounded by police officers as well. Basically, police told me to calm down or else they were going to put me in the back of a police car. They gave me an ultimatum to stay at the scene of the crime, or to go with Tamir in the ambulance.
The day was very horrific for me. I was enraged by the way he was killed, murdered, assassinated, lynched, whatever they may call it. Nobody bothered to look at this man’s record before he became a Cleveland police officer. He had a horrible report. Nobody in Cleveland did their job, and that's why I have a dead son today (Rice 1-2).
It's not uncommon for trainers, known as FTOs in cop-speak, to have histories of misconduct and citizen complaints, according to a Marshall Project review of 10 big-city departments. The trainers get little formal instruction in how to mold young officers' behavior. Becoming a field trainer is seen as a mark of prestige and seniority, rather than a serious and challenging job, law enforcement officials said. Critics say the low standards create poisonous field training programs that fuel a toxic street-cop culture, marked by too much aggression and too little accountability. Since 2011, the Justice Department has ordered at least five major cities to revamp how they run field training.
Training problems have continued despite nationwide protests against police brutality, especially against Black people. In fact, field trainers have been involved in many of the deaths that have prompted demonstrations over the last six years.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was a trainer; as his pupils watched, he kneeled on George Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes.
"What was my client supposed to do but follow what his training officer said?" a defense lawyer, Earl Gray, asked during a court appearance for one of Chauvin's trainees, Thomas Lane. Lane is charged with aiding and abetting Floyd's murder.
In Cleveland, the cop who drove up to 12-year-old Tamir Rice on a cold November morning in 2014 was a trainer. Officer Frank Garmback was teaching Timothy Loehmann when a 911 dispatcher asked the pair whether they could check out a report of a man with a firearm outside a recreation center.
As they approached, Garmback warned, "Watch him, he's going to run,"according to Loehmann’s written statement released by local prosecutors. Loehmann got out of the car and shot and killed Tamir two seconds later. …
A grand jury declined to indict Garmback and Loehmann. Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia, a police department spokeswoman, confirmed that Garmback is still on the force, but she said he no longer works as a trainer. Through his lawyer, Garmback declined to comment (Weichselbaum 1-2).
A police union has filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court to reinstate former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, ...
The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association (CPPA) filed the appeal Friday. Loehmann was fired in May 2017 after an internal review panel investigating the Tamir Rice shooting found he lied or omitted crucial information in his application's personal history statement.
Loehmann has not been charged in Tamir's death. Former Attorney General William Barr announced in December that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal charges in Tamir's death, saying there was not enough conclusive evidence against the police officers.
Tamir's family sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 16 [2021] asking him to reopen the investigation into the boy's 2014 shooting death and to convene a grand jury to consider charges against the Cleveland police officers who killed him (Vera, Alonso, and Riess 1).
Ryan Getty, a former cop who has worked as a trainer and is now a criminologist at California State University, Sacramento … and other policing experts said the biggest failure of the [training] programs is that departments allow officers with questionable backgrounds to mentor new hires. Chauvin, for example, racked up at least a dozen complaints during his 19 years on the Minneapolis force without being disciplined.
"They pass on that socialization of 'I don't care what you learned in the academy; this is how you do it on the street,'" said Getty, who is writing a textbook on field training.
In his academic research on field training officers, Getty found that if young officers drew citizen complaints within their first two years on the job, it was likely that their trainers had histories of allegations filed against them. "There is a definite association between FTOs and their issues and the trainees' later success or deviance in their careers," Getty said.
…
Before recruits can work as officers, they attend police academies, which generally offer four to six months of classes. Then they become trainees on probation, who are easy to fire. Trainees usually don't chase violent 911 calls unless no other patrol officers are around, but as the shooting of Tamir Rice showed, they aren't exempt from responding to complex situations (Weichselbaum 2).
[You may view The Guardian’s showing of the video of the shooting by pasting the following on Google]
Tamir Rice: police release video of 12-year-old's fatal shooting ...
Works cited:
Burke, Minyvonne. “Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice Quits Ohio Police Department Days after He Was Hired.” NBC News, October 11, 2018. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-who-fatally-shot-tamir-rice-quits-ohio-police-department-n919046
Dewan, Shaila and Oppel Jr., Richard A. “In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One.” The New York Times, January 22, 2015. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us/in-tamir-rice-shooting-in-cleveland-many-errors-by-police-then-a-fatal-one.html
McGraw, Daniel. “How Should Tamir Rice Be Remembered?” The Undefeated, August 23, 2016. Net. https://theundefeated.com/features/how-should-tamir-rice-be-remembered/
“Police Dispatcher in Tamir Rice Case Resigns.” USA Today, September 21, 2015. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/21/police-dispatcher-tamir-rice-case-resigns/72558170/
Rice, Samaria. “My 12-Year-Old Son, Tamir Rice, Was Killed by Police. I’m Not Allowed To Be Normal.” ABC News, July 13, 2020. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/12-year-son-tamir-rice-killed-police-im/story?id=71654873
Romo, Vanessa. “Justice Department Declines To Prosecute Cleveland Officers In Death of Tamir Rice.” NPR, December 29, 2020. Net. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/29/951277146/justice-department-declines-to-prosecute-cleveland-officers-who-killed-tamir-ric
Vera, Amir, Alonso, Melissa, and Riess, Rebekah. “Ohio Police Union Appeals Firing of Ex-Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice.” CNN, updated April 28, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/28/us/tamir-rice-officer-timothy-loehmann-appeal/index.html
Weichselbaum, Simone. “One Roadblock to Police Reform: Veteran Officers Who Train Recruits.” The Marshall Project, July 22, 2020. Net. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/22/one-roadblock-to-police-reform-veteran-officers-who-train-recruits
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