Tamir Rice dies

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The Tamir Rice death was an incident on November 23, 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio, in which an American schoolboy was shot dead by a police officer at the age of 12. The case sparked protests across the United States as it joined a series of cases in which American African American citizens were shot dead by police officers.

prehistory

The Cleveland Police Department had been under surveillance by the US Department of Justice in the years prior to a number of incidents and practices involving the use of force . One of the incidents was a car chase in which police officers fired 137 shots and killed a 43-year-old and a 30-year-old. Relatives of the two killed had sued the police violence and received a total of three million US dollars from the city of Cleveland a week before Rice's death.

Timothy Loehmann, the officer who fired the fatal shot, is a 26-year-old white man at the time of the crime and has been employed by the Cleveland Police Department since March 2014. Previously, he was employed for five months by the police in Independence (Ohio) , the southern neighboring city of Cleveland, which had declared him unfit for police work due to poor handling of weapons and insufficient maturity.

incident

Example of an airsoft pistol with an orange muzzle, which is mandatory in the USA. In the Tamir Rice case, this color marking was missing.

The incident on November 23, 2014 was documented by a surveillance camera. The video shows Rice, who is 1.70 m tall and weighs almost 90 kg - walking on a sidewalk and handling a weapon. In the further course, Rice aims at a passerby and then sits down in a small pavilion. A few seconds later, a police car stops right next to the pavilion. Rice approaches the vehicle and fiddles with his belt. One of the policemen shoots the boy immediately after leaving the car.

After the incident, it turned out that Rice's weapon was a soft-air replica of a Colt M1911 that did not have the mandatory orange muzzle and was thus indistinguishable from a real weapon. According to the officials, the twelve-year-old was asked to raise his hands several times in the short time. However, American media (CNN & The New York Times) report that the police officer shot Tamir Rice within 2 seconds of leaving his patrol car.

After the gunshots were fired, it took Rice 4 minutes to receive first medical attention, according to the New York Times. In the meantime (90 seconds after the shooting), the sister who was running on Rice, who was lying on the ground, was arrested and put in the patrol car. The paramedics only arrived after 8 minutes. It took another 5 minutes for Rice to be carried away on a stretcher.

A short time after the incident, the authorities published an emergency call from a concerned resident who had triggered the operation. Literally he says:

“There's a guy in there with a pistol, you know, it's probably fake, but he's like pointing it at everybody… He's sitting on a swing right now, but he's pulling it in and out of his pants and pointing it at people… He's probably a juvenile, you know? "

“There's a guy with a gun. She's probably not real, but he's targeting everyone. He's sitting on a swing right now, but he keeps pulling them out of his pants and putting them back and pointing them at people. He's probably a teenager. "

However, this information was not transmitted to the two officers leaving. After the incident, officers made false statements about who was present and Rice's behavior.

A coroner later identified the boy. According to the family's lawyer, the twelve-year-old went to a park with friends to play in the afternoon.

In October 2015, an expert report exonerated the police officer.

Legal aftermath

Criminal proceedings

On June 3, 2015, Judge Ronald Adrine advised the prosecutor to open a murder trial against the shooter, as there was enough evidence.

On December 28, 2015, a grand jury, on the advice of Attorney Timothy J. McGinty, decided not to indict the gunman and his colleagues.

Civil proceedings

On April 25, 2016, the competent court published a settlement between the city and the family. The city pays $ 6 million, in return the family does not keep up the allegations ("wrongful death claim") against the city.

Temporary suspension of the emergency dispatcher

On March 15, 2017, the officer in charge of the emergency call on the day of the death was suspended for eight days by Cleveland police. The reason given for this disciplinary measure was her failure to pass on the information from the caller that it was possibly a fake weapon and a teenager to her colleagues in the field.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Police officers consider toy guns to be real. Twelve year old shot dead in Cleveland. In: taz.de. November 24, 2014, accessed October 11, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Christine Mai-Duc: Cleveland officer who killed Tamir Rice had been deemed unfit for duty. In: theatlantic.com. December 3, 2015, accessed January 1, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Police officer shot twelve-year-olds within two seconds. In: sueddeutsche.de. November 27, 2014, accessed October 11, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Bob Owens: Accidental Suicide-by-Cop. The Truth Behind The Death Of Tamir Rice. In: bearingarms.com. December 22, 2014, accessed December 29, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b Cleveland cop who killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice not told boy's age. NY Daily News, December 13, 2014, accessed December 30, 2015 .
  6. ↑ a b Tamir Rice: Shots shot at twelve year olds. In: spiegel.de. October 11, 2015, accessed October 11, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Mark Duncan: This fake handgun taken from 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was fatally shot by Cleveland police over the weekend, is displayed after a news conference Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014. The 12-year-old was shot at a city park after he reportedly pulled the Colt 1911 replica on arriving officers. (No longer available online.) In: news.yahoo.com. November 26, 2014, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 11, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / news.yahoo.com
  8. ^ Code of Federal Regulations. In: gpo.gov. Retrieved October 11, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Tamir Rice: US police kill boy, 12, carrying replica gun. In: bbc.com. November 24, 2014, accessed October 11, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Police officer shot twelve-year-olds within two seconds. Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 27, 2014, accessed on October 31, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Is Police Testimony Reliable? Story Of Tamir Rice. (No longer available online.) Msnbc, January 22, 2015, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 31, 2015 (English).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.nytimes.com
  12. ↑ Nikki Ferrell: Tamir Rice shooting. Officers were not told the gun could be fake or that suspect was juvenile. (No longer available online.) Newsnet5.com, November 24, 2014, archived from the original on February 17, 2016 ; accessed on December 30, 2015 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.newsnet5.com
  13. ↑ Is Police Testimony Reliable? Story Of Tamir Rice. msnbc, December 2, 2014, accessed October 31, 2015 .
  14. ^ David A. Graham: 'Probable Cause' in the Killing of Tamir Rice. In: theatlantic.com. June 11, 2015, accessed January 1, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Ohio: Police officer escapes charges after fatal shooting at twelve year old. In: zeit.de. December 29, 2015, accessed December 29, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Shots at twelve-year-olds. Disastrous concatenation of human errors. (No longer available online.) In: tagesschau.de. December 29, 2015, formerly in the original ; accessed on December 29, 2015 (with photo of the so-called toy weapon).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.tagesschau.de
  17. ↑ Six million dollars for the twelve-year-old's death with a toy gun. In: sueddeutsche.de . April 25, 2016. Retrieved October 13, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Eric Heisig: City of Cleveland to pay $ 6 million to Tamir Rice's family to settle lawsuit. cleveland.com, April 25, 2016, accessed April 26, 2016 .
  19. ↑ Eric Levenson and Shachar Peled: Police suspend dispatcher 8 days in Tamir Rice shooting. cnn.com, March 15, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020 .