For job form lie, not boy’s slay
THE CLEVELAND cop who fatally shot Tamir Rice has been fired — not for killing the innocent child but for lying on his job application, authorities said Tuesday.
Officer Timothy Loehmann lost his job 21/2 years after Tamir, 12, was gunned down in a park while holding a pellet gun. Loehmann’s partner, Frank Garmback, was hit with a 10-day suspension, authorities said.
Rice’s mother wondered why the police canned Loehmann for providing false information on his job application — rather than for killing her son.
“I’m relieved that Loehmann was fired, as he should be,” Samaria Rice told reporters. “They fired him for lying on his application. I wish they would’ve fired him for killing Tamir. He should have never been an officer in the first place, and shame on the city of Cleveland for taking so long to handle this situation.”
Loehmann opened fire on Tamir less than two seconds after jumping out of a police cruiser in November 2014. The officers were responding to a report of a man with a gun.
A 2015 grand jury declined to indict Loehmann or Garmback on criminal charges — setting off a fresh round of protests.
On his job application, Loehmann noted that he “resigned for personal reasons” from the police force in the Ohio city of Independence. Loehmann was in fact allowed to resign to avoid being fired, his disciplinary letter says.
The letter notes that Loehmann, while working in Independence, was cited for failing to secure his firearm and being “insubordinate and untruthful” to a superior. Despite the transgressions, he reported on his application that he had never been disciplined.
Loehmann also had an emotional breakdown at the police department’s gun range after struggling to follow basic directions for the state qualification test, the letter says.
Independence police concluded that Loehmann was immature and had “an inability to emotionally function.”
The troubled officer joined the Cleveland Police Department just eight months before the killing of Tamir.
“As satisfying as it is that he was terminated, he was never brought up on charges for killing Tamir Rice,” said family lawyer Earl Ward. “So it was the right result for all the wrong reasons.”
Garmback was suspended for failing to immediately stop his patrol car upon entering the park. Garmback also failed to report his arrival time to a dispatcher and coordinate strategy with the lead officers heading to the scene, his disciplinary letter says.
“When you entered the park entrance and observed the circumstances, the person sitting at the picnic table was not an active shooter, and you were not required to treat the situation as involving an active shooter,” the letter says. “The person did not present an immediate threat.”
Tamir’s mother said she believes Garmback is getting off too easy.
“Garmback should be fired also for pulling up so close to Tamir, to create the murder of Tamir,” said Samaria Rice, who settled a civil lawsuit against the city and the police department for a record $6 million. been terminated from the previous job, but the other department let him resign.
Undeterred, Loehmann began applying to police departments throughout Ohio, and even the NYPD, until he found one incompetent enough to give him a job. Without thoroughly checking his records at his previous police force or interviewing the supervising officers there, the Cleveland Police Department hired Loehmann and put him back on the streets. As it turns out, Loehmann left his horrible record off of his job application for the department. It would’ve likely tanked his chances of ever being hired there or anywhere else had he been truthful about it. So he lied.
But this is not justice for the family of Tamir Rice. Every single person who allowed this failure to take place should’ve been fired. Instead, people throughout the department, from 911 dispatch operators to Loehmann’s partner, got short suspensions and are back on the job. That’s not justice.
More and more, it appears the American justice system flat-out refuses to hold its “bad apples” accountable. Cities write huge checks to families to compensate them for their losses, and occasionally, bad officers lose their jobs, but police officers continue to be allowed to practically shoot and kill at will as long as they claim they were afraid for their own life when they do so.
Why in the hell did it take this long to fire him? The public learned about his previous mess at another police department back in 2014. All of this smacks of being far too little, far too late.