It’s an incomprehensible, indefensible shame. So saddened by this.
I cant seem to let go of this one. The line of baloney that the prosecutor fed the grand jury makes me ill. Of all the cases, I held out hope that the officer would be held accountable, given his history, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
I have nothing new to add, but I have the same feeling as partyof5.
It’s indefensible. There needs to be independent prosecutors when it comes to indicting cops. That is the only chance that any of these issues will ever be addressed and the only chance that we had for this child murderer paying for his crime.
There’s a YouTube video online that shows two white men with AK-47s in Ohio. A police officer approaches them amd asks what they’re doing. They respond that they’r excercizing their 2nd Amemdment rights. The LEO asks a couple of other question, and that’s it.
The same video then shows a black man on the street with an AK-47 slung across his back (I.e., no hands near it). The whole thing is being videotaped by a woman some yards away. A police officer pulls up in his car, pulls his gun immediately and screams for the black guy to get on the ground, which he immediately does, saying he’s just excercizing his rights. The woman announces she’s filming the whole thing. Both are totally compliant with the police. The black guy lying on the ground without moving is handcuffed and taken to the police car.
And people wonder why there is so much support for BLM?
@hayden Was it the same cop both times?
No.
There will be a huge outcry for gun control only when blacks and muslims start exercising their 2nd Amendment rights in very public displays of potential firepower.
Not sure how any judgement can be made then. Had the first cop encountered the black guy, or vice versa, the results could have been different. The 2nd cop was wrong to do what he did.
I’m assuming both cops were white.
The Supreme Court has said that a killer cop can should not be punished if he had a reasonable fear for his safety at the time he killed the person. But I wish the Court would clarify whether the prosecutor is supposed to consider the totality of the circumstances leading up to the killing, or just the half second before the trigger is pulled.
The cop who killed Tamir Rice was close to Tamir, outside of the car. Tamir Rice was 12, but he was a big kid; I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the cops thought he was older than he was. And Tamir had something that looked like a gun. So the prosecutors argued that the cop, at that second, had a reasonable fear for his life.
But what was the cop doing there in the first place? Once the cops put themselves in the situation of being close to Tamir, Tamir’s death warrant was signed: Tamir was a child being screamed at by the police, and before he even had a chance to process the situation and realize what he was supposed to do, he was dead. The gun was fired less than two seconds after the car pulled up. There was no chance this would end in other than death, not with a black “man” with a “gun.”
If the cops had instead adopted a procedure that allowed for the likely fact that Tamir Rice was not a danger, they would not have put themselves in a situation where they would fear for their lives. They had no urgency. They could have stayed further away, not screamed, talked to him as if he were a person, and resolved the situation, or, if he did turn out to be a danger, they still could have shot him. But they never gave him the chance. They decided on execution before they even got there. And that’s what I think is criminal: treating a person as a guilty, dangerous suspect whom they expected to shoot, before they knew whether he was guilty and dangerous.
I’ve seen enough of a cops’“self-defense” defense, when the cop put deliberately put himself in a situation that was dangerous only in his own mind. This is lazy policing. These cops aren’t even trying not to kill. Pulling out the gun and shooting should be the last resort, not the first thing to do.
IMO, the Supreme Court needs to answer the question of whether it counts as murder if the cops adopt a procedure that is likely to result in a suspect’s death even if the suspect is innocent.
I can understand a least a little of what police go through, and I totally get how dealing with criminals so frequently can give you a certain view of people. I also think there are many circumstances when a police officer thinks his/her life is in danger when in fact, in the clear light of hindsight, we know it wasn’t.
That’s why I think we ought to create a new category solely for police amd security officers, mandatory termination. When a LEO demonstrates egregiously poor judgment that results in injury or death, but doesn’t rise to criminal behavior, mandatory termination as a chargeable offense before a grand jury would make sure they don’t get another chance to make another such fatal mistake.
Sorry, I dont see what this particular cop was going thru, other than seeing what he believed to be a Black adult with a gun. As I said before, even if Tamir was an adult(and I might add that young black males are always deemed to be older than they are), he was well within his rights because Ohio is an open carry state. The cops are totally lying because Tamir would not have had time to react in the two seconds that they claimed they shouted and shot him. It is beyond scary given his background, that he was able to get another job as an officer. What type of background check allows him to become a cop again?
Aside from all of this, @hayden , yes you currently have the White gentleman purposely walking the sidewalks in a minority neighborhood of Akron, scaring patrons and the like, and the cops damn near arrest the barbershop owner who confronts the guy. Something is terribly wrong.
As Charles Blow said yesterday. If the cops had taken a few seconds to assess the situation, they wouldve seen no kids were running from Tamir, no one was hiding, no one was scared. There were kids playing in the park. Again, black skin=fear.
This is sad but true on Huffington Post-27 things every black must learn before age 12
The cop who shot Rice had “issues” at his previous department and I believe he would have been terminated if he hadn’t applied for and got the job in Cleveland.
If this ever happens, then prepare yourselves for an attempt from certain groups to ratify the Second Amendment. It would be worded very nicely but the gist would be this : if you aren’t white/non-muslim, then you can not legally carry a weapon. All in the interest of public safety, of course.
You mean amend? Repeal?
I have mentioned before that I am not a gun control proponent but post 152 is correct. When the Black Panthers were starting out in California they were known to legally carry weapons and tell the police that they had them and they were legally allowed to.
The republicans in California led by the republican governor pushed for and passed strict gun control laws
Here is the law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
It was supported by the NRA
@DonnaL Sorry meant repeal. I pressed r and ratify stuck although the two words are not related. Autocorrect sucks 
@tom1944 So I guess I don’t have to wonder since there is precedence. This is sickening. I actually saw a woman comment on fb a couple of days ago that Tamir wouldn’t have been shot if his mom had taught him to ‘read’ instead of play with guns. The other commentors tore her apart but not before her comment got 70 likes. 70! Where do these people come from? (She also had the Confederate flag on her profile pic, so…)
It’s repulsive to say, but I sure as Hell am glad that I look more white than I do Middle Eastern/dark.
So it’s apparently come out that the grand jury never actually voted? I can’t make sense of these new details.
@romanigypsyeyes I saw that earlier today, sigh…
I just dont understand why there is no punishment for a cop that rolled up, and instantly shot a kid playing in the park, especially given the cops prior history.