223.8 - Cleveland prosecutor lays grounds to whitewash killing of Tamir Rice

Cleveland prosecutor lays grounds to whitewash killing of Tamir Rice

Now for our other usual feature, the Outrage of the Week. And this week, oh boy.

You remember - at least I certainly hope you remember - the murder last November of Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old boy who was shot down by a Cleveland cop quite literally less than two seconds after he and another cop zoomed up to him in a patrol car.

It has now been nearly eleven months since Tamir Rice lay on the ground dying as the two cops did nothing to offer or obtain help and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office claims to still be "investigating" what would appear to be an open-and-shut case of at my gosh absolute minimum negligent homicide.

Why the hell is this taking so long? Well, now we know. It was taking a long time for the prosecutors to find a couple of supposed "experts" who could be counted on to reach conclusions that would achieve the goal of letting the cop walk.

Kimberly Crawford and Lamar Sims

The two are retired FBI agent Kimberly Crawford and Lamar Sims, the chief deputy district attorney in Denver - oh yeah, ex-FBI and a prosecutor, there's a real pair of impartial and disinterested sources.

Both of them declared grandly that oh this was just such an unfortunate tragedy and we really really feel for the family - but what the cop did was just fine. Entirely reasonable. Case closed.

They said it in different ways, but they said the same thing: The only thing that matters is what the cop thought, or at least what he said he thought, since the original police report on the killing proved to be laced with lies when the video - which the cops at first didn't know existed - came out. And if the cop thought - or said he thought - there was a threat, then it was entirely reasonable of him to instantly shoot to kill. His own behavior, they maintain, is entirely irrelevant.

But their own words, as clever as they think they are, condemn them and brand them as apologists for a killer.

Crawford said "the speed with which the confrontation progressed would not give the officer time to focus on the weapon" to, apparently, realize it was a toy.

What confrontation? There was no confrontation except the one created by the cops.

Sims, for his part, said that the cop, whose name is Timothy Loehmann by the way, was in a position of great peril because he was so close to Tamir. "The officers did not create the violent situation," he said.

What the hell is he talking about? He was close to Tamir because he chose to be close. He created the peril. And there was no violent situation until the cops created it. And do not forget that the only violent part of the entire thing was cop Timothy Loehmann shooting Tamir Rice to death.

Tamir Rice

Oh, but that's unimportant. It doesn't matter. Crawford said that considering the cops' role in creating the very supposed risk that justified killing Tamir Rice is "armchair quarterbacking" which has "no place" in the discussion. Because, it seems, we mere mortals are not fit to judge cops. And the badge number of every cop in the country should start with double-0.

The reports were released, the prosecutor's office said, in the interests of "transparency." The only thing that's transparent here is the laying of the groundwork for, preparing the public for, letting another killer cop walk.

I cannot begin to tell you how disgusted I am by this. So I will just say it's an outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=45365
http://www.ibtimes.com/tamir-rice-cleveland-shooting-reasonable-independent-probes-what-constitutes-2139703