Tamir Rice killer cop goes free, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty under fire: White Cleveland cops involved in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice escape county grand jury indictments on criminal charges, and Mayor Jackson says hearings will now go forward for possible internal disciplinary charges....McGinty is under fire as racial unrest mounts....Black elected officials and community activists comment to Cleveland Urban News.Com, and activists renew the call for McGinty to resign....McGinty faces reelection next year and did not get the endorsement of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.... Community activists say that the county grand jury process is unconstitutional, anti-Black, pro-police, and often rigged....By Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman
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| Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the three-term Black mayor of the largely Black major American city |
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| Timothy Loehmann, the Cleveland police officer that shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice |
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio — A Cuyahoga County, Ohio grand jury has decided against indictments on criminal charges of two White and over anxious Cleveland cops involved in the shooting death last year of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was Black.
Among the possible charges before the grand jury, including felonies and misdemeanors, were aggravated murder, murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and dereliction of duty.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the city's three- term Black mayor, flanked by Police Chief Calvin Williams, who is also Black, said at a press conference held Monday after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty publicly announced the grand jury decision, that the city will now hold hearings for possible internal disciplinary charges against the police officers.
Those disciplinary hearings will be in compliance with city policies and the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement, said Williams, and Jackson, who has a strained relationship with union leaders of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, including its outspoken president, Steve Loomis.
Rice was gunned down on November 22, 2014 in less than two seconds when police officers Timothy Loehmann, a rookie who pulled the trigger, and Frank Garmback, pulled up at a public park and recreation center on the city's west side where the kid was toting a toy gun, and following a foiled 9-1-1 call to police dispatchers.
Loehmann and Garmback, who both took the fifth before the grand jury and would not testify, have been reassigned to restrictive police duty pending the outcome of the disciplinary process.
The grand jury decision has the Black community in shock, though some say that given the history of Cleveland police garnering impunity from prosecution when they erroneously kill unarmed Blacks, the grand jury outcome was not totally unexpected.
Community activists headed immediately to protest at the Cuyahoga County Justice Center in downtown Cleveland where the grand jury has been meeting in the case since late October. Activists will head next, they say, to the Cudell Recreation Center where the tragic incident occurred.
"Community activists are headed to the Justice Center, the Rev Pam Pinkney-Butts told Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper.
Black leaders were also stunned relative to the decision by the majority White nine-member county grand jury to free the cops at issue from prosecution, and tensions between police and the Black community continue to escalate.
"It is frustrating and hurtful, and the Tamir Rice family and so many others have every right to justice and fair play, none of which seems to exist in these situations," said state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat and former city councilman.
Former state senator Nina Turner, also a former city councilwoman, called the grand jury decision unjust, and said that "the police were wrong."
McGinty held a press conference too and told reporters that Tamir allegedly grabbed for his toy gun when police arrived, though the Rice family attorneys have said that no such conclusive evidence exist to support McGinty's claim, and that the county prosecutor is biased, pro-police, and acts erratic at times.
Community activists say that the county grand jury process is in disarray and needs a complete overhaul, and that McGinty, who is White, routinely favors police. They are also angry with his self-imposed office policy that shields cops that kill people from preliminary felony charges in municipal courts, even if a complaint is filed by a city prosecutor and municipal court judges find probable cause, an arbitrary policy that is in opposition to state law (See Ohio Revised Code 2935.10 ). Blacks, and others, say McGinty, are not permitted to embrace his de facto office policy, and must continue to deal with municipal level felony criminal charges, arrests, and high bonds, and before a county grand jury even convenes.
"Mr. McGinty acts as an attorney for police rather than a prosecutor for the state of Ohio, and I believe that he is dangerous to the fair administration of justice for Black boys and Black people victimized by police killings, and by police in general," said activist Lavitta Murray of the grassroots groups the Imperial Women Coalition and the Cleveland Million Women March.
"We want Tim McGinty voted out of office," said veteran community activist Art McKoy, founder of the grassroots group Black on Black Crime Inc. "He was supposed to be fair and serve the people and all he did was serve the police."
"Mr. McGinty acts as an attorney for police rather than a prosecutor for the state of Ohio, and I believe that he is dangerous to the fair administration of justice for Black boys and Black people victimized by police killings, and by police in general," said activist Lavitta Murray of the grassroots groups the Imperial Women Coalition and the Cleveland Million Women March.
"We want Tim McGinty voted out of office," said veteran community activist Art McKoy, founder of the grassroots group Black on Black Crime Inc. "He was supposed to be fair and serve the people and all he did was serve the police."
Experts commissioned by the attorneys for the Rice family say the deadly shooting by police was excessive force, and is unjustifiable. And they wanted to testify before the grand jury, Rice's attorney, Subodh Chandra, said in a letter to McGinty, who is under fire for hiring his own handpicked law enforcement experts to allegedly taint the grand jury process in favor of police.
A Democrat and former longtime common pleas judge, McGinty was denied an endorsement earlier this month from the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party and activists and Cleveland area Black and other clergy, led by the Rev. Dr. Jawanza Colvin, senior pastor at the prominent Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, have called for his resignation.
McGinty will face Parma Safety Director Mike O'Malley, who is White and a former assistant county prosecutor and chief deputy under former county prosecutor Bill Mason, in the March Democratic primary next year.
O'Malley said Monday that he would have handled the Rice case differently, but did not give specifics.
O'Malley said Monday that he would have handled the Rice case differently, but did not give specifics.
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| Mike O'Malley, currently the Parma safety director who is challenging Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty relative to the March Democratic primary in 2016. O'Malley is also a former west side Cleveland councilman and former assistant county prosecutor |
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Democratic Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, who is up for reelection to a second four-year in 2016 but did not get the endorsement this month from the Cuyahoga Count Democratic Party
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U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the
nation's first Black female attorney general
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Last December the U.S. Department of Justice, an arm of the federal government now led by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the nation's first Black female attorney general, issued findings of systemic problems in the Cleveland Police Department, including illegal excessive force killings, and cruel and unusual punishment against the mentally ill.
An agreed upon court-monitored consent decree for police reforms between the city and the federal government was reached in June.
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