Feds decline charges against officers in Tamir Rice case
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it would not bring federal criminal charges against two Cleveland police officers in the 2014 killing of 12- year- old Tamir Rice, saying video of the shootingwasof too poor a quality for prosecutors to conclusively establish what had happened.
In closing the case, the department brought to an end a long- running investigation into a high- profile shooting that helped galvanize the Black LivesMatter movementandthatbecame part of the national dialogue about police use of force against minorities, including children.
The decision, revealed in a lengthy statement, does not condone the officers’ actions but rather says the cumulative evidence was not enough to support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.
Tamirwas playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in Cleveland on Nov. 22, 2014, when he was shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, seconds after Loehmann and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, arrived at the scene. The officers were called to the recreation center after a man drinking beer and waiting for a bus had called 911 to report that a “guy” was pointing a gun at people. The caller told a 911 dispatcher that it was probably a juvenile and the gunmightbe“fake,” though that informationwas never relayed to the officers.
To bring federal civil rights charges in cases like these, the Justice Department must prove that an officer’s actions willfully broke the law rather than being the result of a mistake, negligence or bad judgment. It has been a consistently tough burden for federal prosecutors tomeet across both Democratic and Republican administrations, with the Justice Department declining criminal charges against police officers in other high- profile cases in recent years, including in the deaths of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
In this case, the Justice Department said poor- quality surveillance video recorded in the area where the shooting took place prevented prosecutors from being able to conclusively determine whether Rice was or was not reaching for his toygunjust prior to being shot.
The two officers who were investigated told authorities soon after the shooting that Rice was reaching for his toyweapon prior to being shot andwas given multiple commands to showhis hands.
Butthe video reviewedby federal prosecutors makes the sequence of events less clear. Thegrainy time- lapse video, which has no audio, “does not show detail or perspective” and the camera’s view is obstructed by apolice patrol car, prosecutors said.
In addition, they said, though the positioning of the boy’s arms suggests they were in the vicinity of his waist, “his hands are not visible in the video and it cannot be determined fromthe videowhathewas doing.”
The Justice Department says seven use- of- force experts — three retained by the family, four by local authorities — reviewed the recording, but the poor quality of the video on which they relied and their “conflicting opinions added little to the case.” The experts used by the family said the shooting wasunreasonable while the four others said that it was reasonable.
The New York Times reported in October that the department had effectively shutdownthe investigation, but Tuesday’ s announcement makes it official.
Inconsistent witness statements also complicated any prosecution, and neither person said they saw exactly what Rice was doing just before the shooting, according to theJustice Department.