Cleveland Police Let 12 Year Old Tamir Rice Lay Dying After Unprovoked Shooting
New details in the shooting of 12 year old Tamir Rice raise more questions.
At the same time that the nation was being rocked by protests in the wake of the refusal of Grand Juries in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City to indict police officers implicated in deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner respectively, another incident occurred in Cleveland, Ohio that resulted in the death of a 12 year old boy who, it turns out, was simply playing in a park with a toy gun. In the weeks after the shooting of that boy, Tamir Rice, we learned that there were conflicting reports as to whether or not the police who had been called to the scene in response to a 911 call from a neighbor who reported a young African-American male walking around play-acting with a gun. In the 911 call, the caller says that it appears to him that the gun in question was a toy gun, but it’s unclear if that information was communicated to the police car that was dispatched to the scene. In any case, as the surveillance video of the incident that was initially released showed, the responding officer drove his car to an area within feet of where the person was reported and began shooting almost immediately after getting out of the car. There is no indication in the video that police made any effort to determine what was actually going on, to identify the person in the park sufficiently to make it clear that it was a child, or to determine if shots were actually being fired. As a result of the officer’s actions, a 12 year old boy named Tamir Rice was dead almost instantly, and now an extended video indicates that, after shooting him, the responding officers made no effort at all to render aid:
The two Cleveland police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was carrying a pellet gun, stood by without rendering medical aid as the boy lay wounded next to their patrol car, a newly released extended surveillance video shows.
Then, about a minute and a half after one officer had shot Tamir, the other officer tackled the boy’s 14-year-old sister as she tried to reach her brother. Tamir was shot Nov. 22 after someone called 911 to report “a guy” who had been pointing a “probably fake” pistol outside a community recreation center on Cleveland’s west side.
The video, obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group, provided fresh detail about a shooting that roiled Cleveland and quickly became the latest shooting to be absorbed into a broader national narrative about police violence in African-American communities.
After the second Cleveland officer, Frank Garmback, subdued Tamir’s sister — he pushed her to the ground back-first, tumbling on top of her in the process — the girl was handcuffed and put in the back of the police cruiser, a few feet from her brother.
The officers stood by without tending to Tamir, the extended video showed. It was not until four minutes after the shooting, the video showed, that Tamir received medical assistance when another man was seen bent down next to him. According to Benjamin Crump, the Rice family’s lawyer, the man who provided the first medical assistance was an F.B.I. agent who was in the neighborhood. Paramedics arrived eight minutes after the shooting, and Tamir was taken away on a stretcher about five minutes later, the video shows.
A shorter surveillance video released earlier showed Tamir being shot by a rookie Cleveland officer, Timothy Loehmann, seconds after the police cruiser arrived and skidded to a stop next to the boy at a gazebo outside the recreation center. The black pistol that Tamir had, which looked like a real handgun, was an imitation. His mother later said it had been given to Tamir to play with by a friend that afternoon.
The police said Tamir was told to raise his hands but instead reached to his waistband for the gun, though the previously released surveillance video showed that the shooting happened so fast, it was hard to know whether the officer issued any warnings or whether Tamir could have understood them if he did.
The killing, which occurred two weeks before a Justice Department report concluded that the Cleveland police had a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force,” angered many residents of the city, which has a black majority. On Thursday, the city’s media relations director, Dan Williams, said the extended video was released once it was clear that it would not interfere with the investigation. “My intent was to get it out so the public could see all of the tape,” Mr. Williams said.
A Cleveland police spokeswoman said they could not comment because the shooting was under investigation. Officials from Cleveland’s main police union did not respond to a request for comment.
In an interview, Mr. Crump called the events on the video “outrageous and inhumane.”
“How inhumane to put her in handcuffs and sit her in the car about four feet from where her brother lay dying,” Mr. Crump said of Tamir’s sister, “and she has to watch that. And they rendered no aid to this kid.”
Family members thought it was important, Mr. Crump said, for “people see this video as they continue to fight for justice and see whether the grand jury will hold the police officer accountable.” Mr. Crump said an audio recording from a phone of someone at the recreation center indicated Tamir was alive when the officers were detaining his sister. The recording, he said, reveals that a teenager had tried to calm Tamir’s sister as she rushed to the shooting, saying: “He’s not dead. He’s still moving.”
The Rice case is currently under investigation and will likely soon be referred to a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury and is already the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by Rice’s family. While both of these matters are likely to take time to resolve themselves and the officers are, of course, entitled to all of the usual presumptions of innocence, it seems clear that there is plenty about this case that raises serious questions about how the officers responded in this situation. First, of course, there’s the decision to bring the car right to the area where Rice was before making any effort to make a tactical assessment of the situation. Even giving the officers the benefit of the doubt in assuming that they were unaware of the 911 report that the gun appeared to be a toy, pulling up to the scene at a high rate of speed, jumping out of the car, and immediately opening fire without first determining what was going on seems to be grossly negligent at best and premeditated at worst. If the officers did try to get Rice to surrender, the video itself indicates that they gave him almost no time to respond, which would be unreasonable for an adult and seems even worse when talking about what should have been obvious to them at that point was a teenager if not a child. Instead of acting appropriately given those facts, or seemingly even taking any steps to ensure there were no civilians around who could have come within the range of fire, they acted in a manner that one would only expect police to act if they were in active pursuit of a fleeing felon who had already given indications that they were a danger to the public. Given that Rice was standing seemingly alone in a park, it seems hard to argue that any such danger existed. Perhaps there’s more to this story, but as the video evidence stands right now this seems to me to clearly be an excessive and irresponsible use of deadly force. How the Grand Jury will ultimately rule on the matter is, of course, another question.
Here are the originally released and extended videos, so the reader can judge for themselves:
BB guns are not toys
I typically tend to fall on the side of extending a good deal of deference to the police, but this goes far, far beyond those limits.
@HarvardLaw92: Yeah, I’m with you there.
The officer’s actions in this incident show a shocking lack of good judgment. I don’t expect police to be mind-readers, but I do expect them to possess a basic level of professional competence, which was distinctly lacking here.
@munchbox: Neither are guns that open carry advocates walk around with. Should they also be gunned down like dogs?
well if you actually watch the video….its shows the kid sitting there…then as he sees the car approach he gets up puts both his hand on the gun..as someone who shoots for a living would not like the wild west style of one handing a handgun… then the cops shoot him…case closed. he approached in a threatening manner with two hands on his “toy” …
you should try the same thing next time you see a cop….go buy a “toy” approach a cop with it pointed at him and see what happens.
@humanoid.panda: BTW. Ohio is an open carry state.
@HarvardLaw92: No authority, anywhere, deserves deference.
@munchbox: Open carry advocates have hands on their weapons all the time when cops approach. Yet mysteriously, they don’t get dead. Nor does police fear justify lack of action to save the life of a boy the size of a small labrador retriever.
Nor do I recall any organized effort by police associations to remove toy weapons from store shelves to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Last time I checked toys were legal and not cause for summary execution.
Doug,
there seems to be a glaring error in the title of this post “Unprovoked” Shooting….would mean that he was just sitting there doing nothing…
not to mention it wasn’t a toy gun… or the fact that he “was simply playing in a park with a toy gun” usually doesn’t mean you provoke someone to call 911 does it?
@munchbox: BB guns were toys when I was a child and see no reason to conclude that has changed. Guns stopped being toys when you were old enough to handle a .22.
@munchbox This is simply wonderful! How do we know Rice was dangerous? Why someone called 911. Why did someone called 911: clearly, he was dangerous!
@Scott: For White people. Black people need not apply, otherwise someone think they are threatening, and once they are threatening, cops are fully within their rights to gun them down. Munchbox just explained that legal loophole.
To put it simply, in my white childhood never was I warned that when outside with my BB gun, I should take care to handle it in a manner the police would not find threatening. And no white boys like me ever got shot by frightened cops.
wolf….lets not skew the story here anymore then Doug already has…not a toy gun…we(society of laws) have been down this road before that’s why you can’t buy a “toy” gun that doesn’t come with day glow orange markings on it anymore.
LOL right do you mean that their gun is holstered and their hand just happens to be on it? or do you mean that when a cop approachs people with open carry they just happen to draw their weapon? But aren’t shot? ….because let me guess they are white or something?
@munchbox: You can find numerous video clips of open carry advocates holding rifles and interacting with the police, and you will find no law making illegal imitation weapons wihout orange coloration.
Are BB guns toys? To the Googles!
Not surprisingly, munchboxjenos has no problem with yet another black person being shot dead by police under sketchy (very, very sketchy) circumstances…
@munchbox:
You left out after the cop shoots you. He should prevent all medical help.
Because
1st Rule of Policing: Police have the right and the duty to go home at the end of each watch. It does not matter how many non-law enforcement personnel are injured or killed or have their “rights” violated to achieve this goal as Police are entitled to impunity for their violence and protection from harm above all others.
Not according to the Police union official
“2. Police said that as they pulled up, they saw Tamir Rice grab the gun and put it in his waistband.
3. Police said they got out of the car and told Tamir Rice three times to put his hands up but he refused.
4. Police said that Tamir Rice then reached into his waistband and pulled out the gun, and was then shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann.”
Not according to the Police union official
How reliable is police testimony?
1. Police said that Tamir Rice was seated at a table with other people.
@munchbox:
Simple solution: every time someone sees a person with an open-carry gun they should call 911.
Right?
Idiot.
@michael reynolds: Actually, I would call 911 if I saw someone carrying a weapon in public, open carry laws or not. Is he a good guy with a gun or a bad guy with a gun? I don’t know, let the police sort it out.
Open carry nuts want the rest of us to be exposed to guns so often that we feel it is normal that there is someone fifteen feet away brandishing the power to kill another human being. I want the open carry nuts to feel comfortable with a constant police presence.
If a white cop sat on a wall and just shot every black child he saw munchbox would justify it.
If a white cop broke into a black school and pulled a Newtown, munchbox and his ilk would justify it.
There is no police shooting of a black person that would ever, under any circumstances, bother these creeps. Killing black people is a feature, not a bug for racist creeps like this.
Good God ass hat you are hysterical! The turds out of your mouth are especially runny today.
it almost sounded like you were trying to turn that into a hump d dumpy poem but failed….figures.
reading comprehension guy….the only bb gun on kmart dot com comes with this DISCLAIMER: The shipment of this product to residents of CA, CT, DE, DC, FL, IL, KY, MA, MI, NJ, NY,
, PA, RI, TN, and WA is prohibited. hmmmmm
wolfie
curious ….http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_FS=1&_nkw=toy+bb+guns&_sop=7
not a single one on the first page of hits with out a day glow orange tip…..not to mention 27 listing down…
@munchbox:
And your point is?
Clearly Kmart is marketing bb guns to kids. It is equally clear that any number of sellers market them as a toy.
from the dx dot com googles…
Disclaimer: All Airsoft Guns are NOT real firearms. All airsoft guns sold to US customers are affixed with an orange tip permanently. DX.com comply 100% with our local and federal law and regulations.
so strange….what were you saying?
@Ben Wolf: “And no white boys like me ever got shot by frightened cops.”
When was the last time a white boy with a BB gun was shot by the police?
@Paul L.: “2. Police said that as they pulled up, they saw Tamir Rice grab the gun and put it in his waistband.
3. Police said they got out of the car and told Tamir Rice three times to put his hands up but he refused.
4. Police said that Tamir Rice then reached into his waistband and pulled out the gun, and was then shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann.”
In two seconds, with no visible interaction seen in the film.
They are lying, of course.
the point is reading is fundamental …toy guns are toys….bb guns that shoot a metal projectile are not. Can’t image saying “go down to the park junior and shoot your bb gun” in a public forum but what do i know… His mother later said it had been given to Tamir to play with by a friend that afternoon.
@michael reynolds: “Simple solution: every time someone sees a person with an open-carry gun they should call 911.”
Except we’d be prosecuted for making false reports. Which has never happened when a black person was killed (that I’ve heard of).
@Gustopher: “Actually, I would call 911 if I saw someone carrying a weapon in public, open carry laws or not. Is he a good guy with a gun or a bad guy with a gun? I don’t know, let the police sort it out.”
That’s the new term for ‘gun him down in the street’? ‘Sort it out’?
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/08/ctv.toy.guns/
In October 1992, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued regulations governing the “Marking of Toy Look-Alike and Imitation Firearms.” Under the new specifications, toy guns were required to bear a solid, “blaze-orange” plug at the tip of their barrel, or be colored entirely white, bright red, orange, yellow,
@munchbox:
Yes, reading comprehension is fundamental. If you go to the wikipedia entry for bb guns, you will read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB_gun
When I was a little kid, we played with bb guns all the time.
More reading comprehension:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6876209
@munchbox: Sir, are you not familiar with grandfathering? Hence my statement no statute or regularion makes ownership of an unmarked BB gun illegal. I still have in storage a replica m-14 BB gun my grandfather bought me. Unmarked, black. A lot of parents give their kids legacy toys.
@munchbox:
And because the toy that 12 year old Tamir Rice had lacked such a tip, he should be shot on sight by someone who should never have been issued a badge and gun, left bleeding with no medical attention, his 14 year old sister should be thrown to the grown, handcuffed, and put in the back of a police car so she could have a good view of her brother as he lay bleeding (what crime did she supposedly commit?), and the police, unaware of the video(s) should lie about what happened in a CMA effort?
The pretzel logic of conservatives at work…
@munchbox:
Hmm. You just said bb guns are not toys, yet here you are referring to toy guns. Can you find someone who will tell you what you think a little more clearly and get back to us?
@anjin-san: That’s only one half of the pretzel. The other half is that people who are carrying Ak-47s around are patriots, and any attempt to restrict their right to carry those guns into bars, schools or churches is a violation of their fundamental rights.
@Barry:
If you are reading a police report, you are reading a lie.
@Ben Wolf:
You’re well aware that I’m referring to the benefit of the doubt. Don’t start with that crunchy granola “fight the man” shit.
The Cleveland police say it was an Airsoft gun without an orange tip.
Per WIKI, “The Airsoft guns are designed to be non-lethal and to provide realistic replicas.”
If you Google “airsoft guns” the first link is hobbytron.com. They say, “This is a toy and is not a real gun.”, and “All Airsoft guns are sold with an orange tip. It is illegal to remove the orange tip.”
WIKI also lists five fatal police shootings of people, mostly kids, with airsoft guns. And states, “Although Airsoft guns in the United States are generally sold with a 6mm (0.24in.) or longer orange tip on the barrel in order to distinguish them from real firearms, this is not in fact required by federal law. … section 272.1 (formerly 1150.1) clearly indicates that these restrictions shall not apply to “traditional b-b, paint-ball, or pellet-firing air guns that expel a projectile through the force of compressed air, compressed gas or mechanical spring action, or any combination thereof.””
…..jeez guys bb guns are not toys …hence not required to be marked as so….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/24/cleveland-police-kill-12-year-old-boy-wielding-bb-gun-that-looked-like-a-semi-automatic-pistol/
too bad he didn’t have the tip on it…probably could have adverted this tragedy.
Doug,
In light of seeing that this was in fact an air soft gun…it was a toy. …but the comment about your faulty title still stands. this was not an unprovoked incident.
@munchbox:
Too bad the cop that did the shooting did not possess the necessary skills to be a competent police officer… probably could have averted this tragedy.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/01/timothy_loehmann_the_cleveland.html
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/01/timothy_loehmann_the_cleveland.html
But hey! Let’s blame the whole thing on the 12 year old child. Nothing to see here folks, please move along…
good god anjin-san project much? it was a tragic mistake by a rookie cop….
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 1990 that police in the United States use force some 200 times per year “in a confrontation where an imitation gun had been mistaken for a real firearm.” The issue is how law enforcement officers are supposed to determine in a split second that a realistic-looking weapon is fake
@anjin-san:
anjin, why are you wasting your time arguing with a fool? It only makes you frustrated, and the fool loves it.
also if you listen to your buddy, ass hat, and the title of this post you might get the impression that the cops just rolled up and pulled off a drive by…..
LOL ten thumbs up!
@munchbox:
We are not talking about someone who is simply an inexperience cop, we are talking about someone who clearly was unqualified to wear the uniform in the first place.
I guess you need something to cling to while you are eating crow after hours of bone heatedly clinging to the line “it’s not a toy” despite numerous people who are better informed than you telling your otherwise.
I notice you are working pretty hard to avoid what is, after all, the topic of this thread – the fact that the officers made no effort to render aid to a child who lay bleeding right in front of them. Perhaps you can focus a bit and address the topic at hand.
I was once held up at gunpoint.
I was able to tell cops it was an automatic, and that it was a caliber larger than .22 or .32. Turned out it was a .40 caliber S&W if I recall correctly. I was also able to contribute to a pretty accurate artist’s rendering, and to give accurate information on his clothing (gray raincoat, mid-thigh length) and his direction of flight afterward (on foot, across the boulevard and off to the right.)
At the time I was low on sleep, long on work, 23 years old, and had zero police training.
My wife foiled an attempted rape by pretending to faint, was pistol-whipped, at night, as she was walking home at the end of a long day, and nevertheless managed to correctly state that the guy had used a revolver. We know because he ditched the gun. (In a comic side note, he happened to toss it into a cop’s yard.)
We pay and train these police officers to be able to accurately assess a potential threat. If a police officer is less capable than an exhausted restaurant night manager, or a bleeding waitress, I don’t think that’s a person who should be a cop.
He saw a black kid, he thought he saw a gun, he panicked and shot. And then he and his equally useless partner strolled around while the kid bled out, interrupting their leisure time only long enough to throw a teen-aged girl down and handcuff her for trying to aid her dying brother.
You all can do a compare/contrast that video with this one from Fallujah, Iraq, where Marines gun down a bus with insurgents attempting to attack a checkpoint. The Marines, after a very short firefight, pull the wounded from near the burning wreckage as ammo cooks off inside the burning bus and then render first aid within minutes…
Well i was really commenting on the misleading title to the post and the fact that links provided within said post doesn’t say anything about an airsoft gun…led me to think otherwise. which is why i made that comment. which is still valid bb guns are not toys. And you’re right that guy seems like a pretty shitty cop. i wouldn’t be surprised to hear that after all this drama that the guy doesn’t take is own live considering his already fragile mind set. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/cleveland_police_officer_who_s.html
@michael reynolds:
Many years ago I was walking to my car after closing the bar, & I passed three teenagers that I knew were wrong the moment I laid eyes on them. I circled back to the bar, and rounded up my female co-bartender and the cocktail waitresses, and got a few more guys so we could walk the girls to their cars as a large group.
While I was doing that, they were beating the shit out of one of our busboys about a block away. They had to put a steel plate in his skull.
I’m a tired bartender, and I knew instantly that they were a significant threat. I had no trouble giving a good description of them to the cops the next day. I still have a halfway decent picture of those assholes in my head many years later.
But apparently we can’t expect the same from professional law enforcement officers.
@Barry:
Not my problem. If the open carry nut isn’t doing anything wrong, he has no reason to object to police checking him out, does he?
Of course they let him die. It gets rid of a witness to their incompetence.
Had there not been security footage, we would have only had the police officers’ version of events — a tragic accident because the kid would not stand put down the apparent weapon after three lawful warnings, and then began moving in a threatening manner.
Now we have footage, and we know the police lied.
@munchbox:
I’ve been shot by bb guns multiple times. Unless you are the size of a small rodent guns are toys.
@Grewgills: http://youtu.be/P9gOboYlm-g?t=4m9s
@Mikey:
That’s about what it felt like, We were stupid kids, all of us 10-12 and playing army with bb guns and fireworks was fun. Looking back on it, we’re lucky none of us was ever hurt beyond some scrapes, bruises, and first degree burns.
@Grewgills: When my brother and I were kids, we used to chase each other around our grandparents’ big farm with BB guns. In fact, I had a BB pistol of the same model Chevy Chase uses in that video. But one time I had Grandpa’s BB rifle, and it had a pump, and if you pumped it up about 10 times it would REALLY hurt. So of course I did that and shot my brother in the ass. He went crying to Grandma and that was the end of the fun for that day.
Another time he got it and pumped it up about 12 times and shot one of the neighbor’s chickens. I heard that BB hit that chicken from about 100 yards away. Grandma came storming out of the house, angrier than we’d ever seen her. I guess she didn’t feel like paying for a chicken. Good times…LOL…
You all are missing what munchbox is really saying here.
In the hands of a white child, a BB gun is a toy.
In the hands of a black child, a BB gun is a weapon.
You all are missing what munchbox is really saying here.
In the hands of a white child, a BB gun is a toy.
In the hands of a black child, a BB gun is a weapon.
A couple of years ago, the term active shooter was big in the media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_shooter
In such a situation, the police did not have time set up a perimeter and tactical operation center, determine all of the players, devise a detailed plan, and execute the plan. After Columbine, the police decide that they needed to act more quickly than they had in the past.
Now that there has not been a large scale school shooting in the U.S. and that wanting to de-police has become the issue of the day, everyone seems to have forgotten the Active Shooter scenario and wants to go back to a slow, measured response where the biggest concern will be how law enforcement can be second guessed for every decision that can be made and that decisions should be made by higher-ups. I suspect that this POV will continue until the next school shooting where law enforcement takes its time to determine the race or ethnicity of all of the players involved and determined the appropriate response.
yes…because that is what i said.
What I said is that bb guns are not toys… they can kill small animals.. they can change someone’s life forever by either putting the end to someone’s vision or just like this unfortunate incident can provoke a cop to shoot you because you are wielding a weapon in the face of authority. Only morons like you nikki and the grand old “white cop broke into a black school” ass hat there thinks otherwise.
thats because your grandmother came from a generation with more sense then you will ever have. And she knew that bb guns aren’t toys and knows that by shooting them at other people that’s just plain idiotic. This just reinforces what i have been saying. And all the lapdogs here seem to claim otherwise…just proves the ingrained stupidity of yourselves.
@superdestroyer: Are you actually making an equivalency between how police should react to somebody with a gun in a school and how they should react to somebody alone in a park with a gun? I must be misunderstanding, because that would be ridiculous.
@ElizaJane:
First, Tamir Rice was not alone in the park. Second, if the police stop at a distance when someone has a rifle (what I have heard some law enforcement types refer to as a long gun) then the police cannot approach them on foot or slowly. A person with a rifle has the police at a huge disadvantage since the person with the rifle has a much greater effective range than the police who are armed with a pistol. Thus, a person reported to be in a public area with a rifle not only fits a scenario for an active shooter (there has even been a Law and Order episode based on it) but also a scenario that puts the police at a huge disadvantage.
It’s very complicated being a right-wing racist, isn’t it? You have to figure out how to denounce any and all policing that imposes on folks like Cliven Bundy and talk a lot about jackbooted thugs. Then you have to support every instance of jackbooted thuggery when it comes to black victims.
I’d say it must be hard to hold two diametrically opposed positions in your brain at the same time, but I guess when your head’s empty there’s room enough.
Well, here we are again.
Are the police ever wrong? Do they ever use excessive force? Of course they do, but as the NYPD police union has effectively told us in recent days – don’t you dare think otherwise, or we’ll disrespect you and not do our jobs.
In other news, Jenos’ idol George Zimmermann was arrested the other day for aggravated assault and domestic violence with a weapon.
@anjin-san:
At what point do we start calling George Zimmerman ‘O.J. 2.0″?
@humanoid.panda:
Don’t be silly, open carry advocates are almost universally white, black open carry is what led Ronald Reagan to cracking down on the second amendment in the first place.
I think you can make a case for the cop shooting the kid because he thought the kid had a real gun and was going to shoot, but there is no excuse ever for standing around while a 12 year old bleeds to death.
In any shooting once a suspect is shot, the police should be giving aid until EMTs arrive to take over. To not give aid IMO is negligence on the part of the officers and they should be held accountable.
Strangely enough-this case doesn’t seem to get near the attention it should-probably because the Missouri and New York grand Jury non indictments and protests were getting the most attention. I suspect this video may change that.
@EddieInCA:
I bet he was shaking down witnesses, looking for Martin’s real killer.