On Saturday, June 13, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty released results of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department investigation into the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on November 22.
Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann – a rookie on the force – shot and killed the youth outside the Cudell Recreation Center on the West Side of Cleveland, Ohio, responding to a 911 call that someone had a gun in the park. That weapon turned out to be an airsoft gun. The youth died in a hospital the following day.
The timing of the tragedy relative to Ferguson is worth pointing out. The St. Louis region was under a State of Emergency on November 22 and had been on edge for weeks, anticipating the St. Louis County Grand Jury decision concerning Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr. on August 9.
That decision came on November 24, two days after the killing of Tamir Rice. Ferguson erupted in arsons and looting. Only two days after that, on November 26, did Cleveland Police release part of a surveillance video that shows the killing of Rice. The video evidence is very different from what Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba had been telling the media, based on his conversations with the then-unnamed police shooter and his partner.
Before the video surfaced, police claimed Loehmann and his then-unnamed partner, Officer Frank Garmback, first saw the youth sitting with a group under a gazebo in the park. They said they saw him get up and take what they thought was a pistol from a table and stuff it in his waistband. Police also said that the officers told Rice three times to raise his hands, and that when he reached for what they thought was a gun, he was shot.
“But it’s hard to believe that’s possible based on the video,” as the Northeast Media Group, publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, said in a November 26 editorial.
The video, the editorial notes, “shows officers in a cruiser pull up within several feet of Rice, who was not with a group, but by himself underneath a gazebo. Immediately, even before the car stops rolling, the cruiser’s passenger side door opens, an officer emerges and fires at Tamir, who drops to the ground. … The shot that struck Tamir appears to have been fired the very moment the officer stands up after getting out of the car.”
The editorial then asked: “Why did the officers drive right up to Tamir? Why didn’t they park further away, climb out of their car and shield themselves with a door or another section of the car, and then order Tamir to drop his weapon?”
The editorial ended with a challenge: “the police have a lot of explaining to do.”
Indeed, they still do, even after the release of this Sheriff’s Department report. The police did not do much explaining to the investigators. Both Loehmann and Garmback invoked their constitutional right to silence when the target of a criminal investigation. A handful of police officers who responded to the scene on November 22 did speak to Sheriff’s Department investigators – but only after the prosecutor denied them the immunity their lawyer requested.
Assistant County Prosecutor Matt Myers told Sheriff’s Department investigators he was “unwilling to offer the remaining officers any letters [of immunity], stating that they are not facing criminal charges and precedent will not be set in giving letters of immunity (or the like) to officers for doing their job.”
Whether or not they coordinated their stories in advance, the cops who testified all stressed that Rice looked much older than 12 – according to the autopsy, he was 5 feet 7 inches and weighed 195 pounds – and that the airsoft gun looked like a real, deadly weapon.
“Referring to his vast experience and knowledge with firearms,” the Sheriff’s Department reported, Cleveland Detective Dan Lentz “said the weapon looked a thousand percent (1,000%) real.” This exaggeration is reminiscent of Nigel Tufnel, lead guitarist of the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, who claimed his amplifier was louder because the volume knob went “to 11.”
Cleveland Firefighter Patrick Hough, who drove the ambulance that transported the wounded youth to the hospital, raised the only good question about how Loehmann and Garmback responded to the scene.
“I remember seeing the police car where it was, which kind of threw me for a loop,” Hough told Sheriff’s Department investigators. “Why was it on the grass?”
The Plain-Dealer editorial writers asked the same question about what appeared to be an extremely dangerous way to respond to someone reported to be armed and dangerous. So surely investigators pursued why this first responder was thrown “for a loop,” in an effort to elicit some possible criticism of the police officer suspect’s conduct?
Nope. Sheriff’s Department Detective John Morgan’s response to this critical remark was: “Uh-huh.”
It’s an important observation to pursue, because in the light of other testimony, Tamir Rice might be alive today if the police officers had observed him closely, rather than pull right up on him and shoot him within seconds.
An unnamed next-door neighbor testified that “even though [Tamir] may not have appeared to be 12 years of age by his size, if you looked close at the way he carried himself and his mannerisms, you could tell that he was a young boy.”
It’s no surprise that the detective did not pursue the firefighter for potential criticism of police conduct. This same detective already had coached this same witness on how to evade his questions. “If I ask you a question, and you don’t feel like answering,” Morgan told Hough, “you can, you know, turn to your union rep, you can turn to your chief, or you can just say, ‘I don’t feel like answering,’ and I’ll say, ‘OK.’”
Other police witnesses clearly had been coached or already knew to avoid answering any questions that might actually assist the investigators in figuring out if a crime was committed.
The person who called 911 about Tamir Rice said that the gun was “probably fake” and that the person with a probably fake gun was “probably a juvenile.” However, Cleveland Police Dispatcher Constance Hollinger did not relay these two crucial qualifications to the police dispatcher who sent police to investigate.
Why not? She wouldn’t say.
“Hollinger refused (per her attorney) to answer a question about why she did not relay information from the ‘911’ caller about the person with the gun is ‘probably fake’ and ‘probably a juvenile,’” the report states.
Perhaps she did not pay attention closely enough to catch the information. In her 2013 performance evaluation, previously released by the City of Cleveland (but not included in this report), Hollinger’s supervisor commented she “tends to be abrupt, and disconnect the caller when they are attempting to provide additional info.”
There is other, additional, new heartbreaking information in this report. The most haunting line comes from an unnamed FBI agent with advanced paramedical training. He was in the area at the time of the shooting and was the first to give the wounded youth medical attention. Loehmann and Garmback managed to call their police union, then tackle and handcuff Tamir Rice’s sister when she arrived at the scene, yet they applied no first aid to the boy.
“I began to speak to him” the FBI agent / paramedic described his first aid experience. “He turned over and acknowledged and looked at me, and he like reached for my hand.”
In the report, it’s the last time we see the boy alert and alive – reaching for the hand of the first person who tried to save his life.
Another line from this report is haunting, when we remember that Tamir Rice and Michael Brown Jr. were not isolated victims, but rather statistics in a disturbing trend that sparked a national protest movement. This line is spoken by a “large older black man” at the rec center on November 22. When he heard the news of the fatal shooting, he said, “They done killed another one of us.”
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor now has the case and will present it to a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury. The assistant prosecutor’s refusal to hand out letters of immunity to cops like candy is one good sign.
While not legally binding on the county prosecutor or grand jury, it’s noteworthy that on June 11 Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald B. Adrine ruled there is probable cause to charge Loehmann with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty. He also found probable cause for charges of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty against Garmback. He was ruling on affidavits filed in municipal court by local clergy and activists.
