When bad cops move to new department, expect trouble

Timothy Loehmann began his policing career in a suburban community of Cleveland.

He was a mess. His emotional immaturity, lying and insubordination were deemed dire, so much so that a deputy chief asserted in a written assessment that Loehmann shouldn’t be an officer. After all, it’s a job that gives a person extraordinary powers over the average citizen, including the legal right to shoot someone dead.

But that small police department allowed Loehmann to resign unscathed by his record, which allowed him the ability to shuffle over to the larger Cleveland Police Department, which hired him.

Within his first few months on the job, he shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

On May 30, more than two years after the killing, the Cleveland Police Department finally fired Loehmann — for what sounds like a technicality. He was fired for not disclosing his previous issues.

Loehmann is a type in law enforcement, a so-called gypsy cop: a problem officer who is allowed to exit quietly and unscathed from one department and then join a police force elsewhere, often with devastating results. This is not unusual. It’s not unlike a Catholic diocese or other religious organization moving pedophile clerics around. Or school districts that shuffle teachers and coaches with questionable records.

It’s often done to save the legal hassles of a firing, or to placate a union.

The issue was highlighted in a March 2016 report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).

“A lot of the chiefs in this room will tell you that they try to fire officers who engage in serious misconduct, but they have arbitration boards that overrule the chief,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF.

Certainly, there are plenty of instances where police take a life well within the bounds of the law and even the public’s understanding of a justified use of force. This is the majority of cases.

And even in the death of Tamir, there are extenuating circumstances in the officer’s favor. A dispatcher did not relay all of the pertinent information. Loehmann and his partner weren’t told that the person was likely a juvenile and that the gun he had was probably fake.

But that doesn’t dismiss Loehmann’s past record. Nor does it mitigate the fact that his previous department judged that its duty to public safety ended when it sent him out their door.

Clearly, nothing will change without a commitment from departments, the boards that oversee them, licensing agencies and unions. A good start would be establishing a system to help departments track officers who have lost their licenses in other states.

Despite backlash from highly publicized shootings in recent years, police officers generally are held in high esteem. They face dangerous situations just by showing up for work, and the public generally respects that.

But not everyone is cut out to be an officer.

Tamir Rice should be in middle school. He should have graduated from the sixth grade and gone on with his young life.

Tamir’s mother, in an interview with The New York Times, captured the proper sentiment: “Timothy Loehmann should have never been a police officer in the first place.”