Kin of Tamir Rice ask feds to reopen case of child killed by cop

Relatives of Tamir Rice asked the Justice Department Friday to reopen case of the 12-year-old Black boy fatally shot by a white Cleveland police officer in 2014.

Federal prosecutors announced in late December, during the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, that they were closing the case without federal criminal charges, saying video of the incident was too grainy to conclusively establish what happened.

“I’m asking DOJ to reopen the investigation into my son’s case,” Rice’s mother, Samaria Rice, said. “We need an indictment and conviction for Tamir’s death.”

The devastated mom said she’s “still in so much pain because no one has been held accountable for the criminal act that took his life.”

The shooting led to community outrage and protests that continued after a state grand jury declined to indict either the officer who shot Rice (photo below) or his partner in December 2015.

“The truth is this case is tragically simple. Tamir Rice was a boy. On November 22, 2014 he was doing something many boys enjoy: playing with a toy gun in a park near his house,” lawyers for the family wrote in their letter to the Justice Department dated Friday.

The “essential facts are not in dispute,” the letter argues.

Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback drove into the park “in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood of Cleveland at a high rate of speed,” and Loehmann had his gun drawn and safety off when he “jumped out of the still-moving car and immediately shot the 12 year-old boy before him,” the letter states.

“If these police officers had driven into a park in a wealthy, predominantly White suburb, if the boy they saw sitting there under the gazebo was White — is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that that boy would still be alive today? But Tamir was Black and Tamir is dead,” the letter states.

Tamir was playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center when a man drinking beer and waiting for a bus called 911 to report that a likely juvenile was pointing a gun at people. The man told the dispatcher that the gun might be “fake,” but that information was not relayed to Loehmann and Frank.

Both officers claimed Loehmann gave Tamir multiple commands to raise his hands before firing, but the family rejects that assertion, saying Rice had no time to respond.

Even the judge who convened the grand jury in the case said he was swayed by “how quickly” Loehmann fired on the boy who had been sitting alone when the officers approached.

“The video in question is notorious and hard to watch. After viewing it several times, this court is still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly,” Judge Ronald Adrine of the Cleveland Municipal Court wrote in his ruling that found probable cause.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the new request from Rice’s relatives.

The family’s letter will be a test of how new Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to move ahead with the Biden administration’s stated public commitment to root out racial discrimination and excessive force in public policing.

“The election of President Biden, your appointment, and your commitment to the rule of law, racial justice, and police reform give Tamir’s family hope that the chance for accountability is not lost forever,” the note addressed to Garland read.