12-28-2015, 04:59 PM
The Grand Jury did not indict officer Loehmann or Garmback.
Prosecutor McGinty, who many accuse of stacking the deck in the officers' favor, announced today that while what happened was undoubtedly "a perfect storm of human error", the jurors found no criminal conduct on the part of the officers.
The only job of the jurors was to determine if Loehmann was reasonably in fear for his life, rightly or wrongly, when he pulled the trigger. Their job was not to address the improper approach, the false narrative told by police reps after the shooting, Cleveland PD's failure to check Loehmann's record, etc...
The announcement didn't indicate whether the Cleveland PD has taken disciplinary action against or fired the officers. I hope so. Their poor judgments and skills put them in the position where they were afraid of being killed by what turned out to be 12-year-old with a pellet gun within two seconds of arrival. The 911 dispatcher who didn't convey all of the info to the officers resigned many months ago.
I think the Rice family's civil suit against the officers and the City of Cleveland will be a slam dunk given the wrongful approach, the unlikelihood that Tamir heard any commands from the rolling patrol car if any were given, and the lies told by the police reps immediately after the killing. All of those factors can likely be considered in the non-criminal case.
Tamir's family will probably be another one that gets millions of dollars. I wish major police forces would invest even half as much in training and body cams as they do in paying for wrongful deaths and brutality.
Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/us/tam....html?_r=0
Prosecutor McGinty, who many accuse of stacking the deck in the officers' favor, announced today that while what happened was undoubtedly "a perfect storm of human error", the jurors found no criminal conduct on the part of the officers.
The only job of the jurors was to determine if Loehmann was reasonably in fear for his life, rightly or wrongly, when he pulled the trigger. Their job was not to address the improper approach, the false narrative told by police reps after the shooting, Cleveland PD's failure to check Loehmann's record, etc...
The announcement didn't indicate whether the Cleveland PD has taken disciplinary action against or fired the officers. I hope so. Their poor judgments and skills put them in the position where they were afraid of being killed by what turned out to be 12-year-old with a pellet gun within two seconds of arrival. The 911 dispatcher who didn't convey all of the info to the officers resigned many months ago.
I think the Rice family's civil suit against the officers and the City of Cleveland will be a slam dunk given the wrongful approach, the unlikelihood that Tamir heard any commands from the rolling patrol car if any were given, and the lies told by the police reps immediately after the killing. All of those factors can likely be considered in the non-criminal case.
Tamir's family will probably be another one that gets millions of dollars. I wish major police forces would invest even half as much in training and body cams as they do in paying for wrongful deaths and brutality.
Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/us/tam....html?_r=0