Tamir Rice Prosecutor Indicted Innocent Men, But Not Killer Cops
Tim McGinty never intended to prosecute the officers who killed Tamir Rice. Will that cost him his job?
Joy-Ann Reid 12.29.154:30 PM ET
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty’s announcement that a grand jury, at his office’s recommendation, declined to file charges against the two officers who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice surprised almost no one.
McGinty has made no attempt to mask his belief that rookie officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback committed no crimes on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014. That’s the day when Garmback rapidly pulled their police cruiser within inches of Rice at a Cleveland community center and Loehmann jumped out, firing.
In fact, during his press conference, McGinty made numerous mentions of the many risks police officers face, the split-second decisions they have to make to protect their and the public’s lives, and how real the toy gun Rice was holding as he played at the park looked.
In what could have been a defense closing argument, McGinty stated that the enhanced surveillance video that captured Rice’s shooting, and the aftermath in which he lay bleeding and unattended on the ground, while his 14-year-old sister was tackled to the ground by officers, handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car as she tried to run to him, “proved” that Rice was indeed “drawing his pistol” (which was actually a pellet gun) as the officers approached.
And while McGinty called the shooting a tragedy and a “perfect storm of miscommunication and human error,” he insisted that it “did not indicate criminal conduct by the officers.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/29/rice-prosecutor-indicted-innocent-men-but-not-killer-cops.html
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