No Indictment of Police in Tamir Rice Shooting
December 28, 2015
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Today, a Cleveland grand jury declined to indict two Cleveland Police Department officers over the November 2014 killing of Tamir Rice, as reported by ClickOnDetroit. We've posted repeatedly on the shooting of 12-year-old Rice by Cleveland police officers, including:
VIDEO: Shooting of Tamir Rice by Police Goes to Grand Jury (6/4/2015)
Cleveland Tries Out Baltimore Justice, Ignores Facts in Tamir Rice Shooting (6/11/2015)
Two Independent Reviews: Shooting of Tamir Rice “Reasonable” (10/11/2015)
The shooting was caught on surveillance camera, and presented what to us certainly appeared to be a pretty open-and-shut case of a justifiable use of force. Tamir Rice, who while only 12 years old weighed a whopping 195 pounds (see autopsy report embedded at bottom of this post), was the subject of 911 cals reporting he was pointing an apparent gun at people. (The gun would later turn out to be a pellet gun rather than a firearm.) A patrol cars with two officers pulled up rapidly to Rice's location, at which point Rice clearly reaches for the "gun" in his waistband. The officers respond to this reasonably perceived threat of deadly force by shooting and killing Rice. (One of the 911 callers had reportedly told the operator that the gun appeared to be a fake, but this information was not passed on to the responding officers, who necessarily assumed the "gun" to be real.) That video can be viewed here: