This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, December 30, 2015:
There are two YouTube videos of the shooting of Tamir Rice. There’s the one that the media pushed all across the country which proved – proved! – that once again white police deliberately shot an unarmed black boy without provocation. Case closed.
And then there’s the other one that the Grand Jury saw. Instead of running just 1 minute 53 seconds, the longer version, running more than nine minutes, showed a young man pointing his gun at various individuals passing by the pavilion in front of the Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio, on Saturday afternoon, November 22, 2014. It shows a police cruiser responding to a 911 dispatch call – a “Code 1” – a live shooter situation involving a “guy pointing a gun at people.”
And that’s exactly what Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback saw: a heavy-set young man loitering in the area. When the officers shouted for him to raise his hands, he instead reached inside his waistband and pulled out the gun. In that instant Officer Loehmann recognized the threat and ended it with two shots, one of them striking Rice in the stomach, killing him.
The details came later, much later. Far too late to prevent the shooting. The 911 caller, an observer at the scene, got concerned about Rice’s behavior, shown clearly on the longer video as he pointed his pistol at passersby, and called the dispatcher. He told her that he was “probably a juvenile” and that the pistol was “probably fake.” That information was never relayed to the officers who were then enroute to the scene.
When the officers arrived, it was no juvenile they saw waving a toy gun around but a grown man weighing (according to the autopsy following the shooting) nearly 200 pounds. When he failed to respond to the officers’ demands and then started to pull the pistol from his pants, the officers responded appropriately.
And that’s what the Grand Jury just concluded, having spent the last two months reviewing testimony from more than 27 witnesses including teachers, nearby residents, and the 911 caller himself. They viewed an enhanced version of the video showing clearly that Rice reached inside his pants for the pistol instead of raising his hands.
The officers couldn’t tell that the pistol was in fact an Airsoft Black Ops 1911 pistol, a nearly exact replica of a Model 1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. They especially couldn’t tell it was a replica as the bright red neon plug at the end of the barrel had been removed.
The prosecutor in the case, Tim McGinty, said the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict was reasonable:
Given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes, and miscommunications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police … [Office Loehmann had a] mistaken yet reasonable belief that he was about to be shot.
Loehmann testified on his own behalf:
With [Rice’s] hands pulling the gun out and his elbow coming up, I knew it was a gun and it was coming out. I saw the weapon in his hands coming out of his waistband and the threat to my partner and myself was real and active.
A local pastor bought the short version while ignoring altogether the longer one. Jawanza Colvin, pastor of the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church of Cleveland, asked “Why was this young man not given ample opportunity to comply with [the] officers’ commands?” McGinty replied that the Supreme Court has ruled that decisions in deadly-force cases must be judged “by what he or she knew at the moment, not what we learned later,” adding that split-second decisions cannot later be second-guessed. Said McGinty: “Based on these rules, the actions of Officer Loehmann and Officer Garmback were not criminal.”
This wasn’t good enough for Rice’s family, which has just filed a lawsuit against the officers and the department, claiming that McGinty had already made up his mind about the officers’ innocence long before presenting the evidence in the matter to the grand jury.
McGinty brought in two outside experts to testify during the grand jury’s investigation, a retired FBI agent and a Colorado prosecutor, both of whom concluded that, after looking at all the evidence (the 224-page report of the investigation included interviews with at least 27 people including teachers, friends, and the 911 caller), the shooting of Tamir Rice by Officer Loehmann was reasonable given the circumstances.
Said attorneys for the Rice family:
It has been clear for months now that … McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment….
Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir in less than one second, Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury [that] their conduct was reasonable and justified.
It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire “experts” to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation.
So the ordeal for the officers is far from over. Not only do they face this lawsuit, they are also facing a federal investigation and an internal investigation by the police department as well.
For the media, the verdict is in, the grand jury’s decision notwithstanding: the white racist cops are guilty of premeditated murder of an innocent young unarmed black boy. That fits their agenda, and the longer Youtube video is conveniently ignored.
Sources:
Washington Times: Tamir Rice officers not charged in fatal shooting
Wall Street Journal: Cleveland Police Not Charged in Fatal Shooting of Tamir Rice
Wall Street Journal: Boy With BB Gun, 12, Dies After Being Shot by Cleveland Police
Background on shooting of Tamir Rice
Los Angeles Times: Grand jury declines to indict Cleveland officer in fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice
BBC: Tamir Rice case: Police will not face charges over killing
The short video of the Tamir Rice shooting
The longer 9-minute video of the Tamir Rice shooting
Yahoo.com: Tamir Rice Case: Prosecutor Abused, Manipulated Grand Jury Process, Family Attorneys Say
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