12 year-old Tamir Rice was murdered in cold blood on Nov. 22, 2014, but Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty has denied Tamir's family justice, succesfully asking a grand jury for no charges. If the prosecutor won't do his job, the feds need to do it for him.
The video is clear. Tamir was shot by rookie police officer Tim Loehmann just three seconds after police arrived, responding to a possible armed man (it was a child with an Airsoft toy). Loehmann claims he thought Tamir had a gun, but everything happened so fast that he never could have seen what Tamir was reaching for, and Tamir would not have had time to hear Loehmann's orders.
This is not the way we need our police to act. Cops are the only people who can legally kill us, so while we must be grateful for their sacrifices, we also need to hold them to a higher standard. Loehmann's rash, deadly behavior falls grossly short of that standard.
Could it be that Tamir was black, and Loehmann made a gut decision? There's no way to know what's in Loehmann's mind, but we do know that police shoot black American teenage boys 21 times more than their white counterparts, and that the Cleveland PD has a problematic history. DOJ needs to say that black lives matter too, give Tamir's family justice, and launch a civil rights investigation immediately.
Tamir's family has asked for such an investigation, and U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach is reviewing it. This petition stands with them - sign your name today!
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach and Asst. AG for Civil Rights Vanita Gupta:
Considering the suspicious circumstances surrounding the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and the failure of a grand jury to secure an indictment, I join Tamir's family in urging the Department of Justice to open an independent investigation into the boy's killing by a Cleveland police officer.
[Your comments here]
Sincerely,
[Your name]
