Cleveland: Family of Tamir Rice Denounces Prosecutor Reports Exonerating Killer Cops
October 19, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
October 16—The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old youth murdered by Cleveland police on November 22, 2014, held a news conference to expose the “expert” reports that came out on October 10 and to call for a special prosecutor to take over the case. John Abady, one of the attorneys for the family, said that prosecutor Timothy McGinty sought out “experts” who would side with the police and justify the killing of Tamir Rice as “reasonable.” Abady pointed out that one of the “experts” claimed that Timothy Loehmann, the cop who shot Tamir, said in a statement that he gave commands to Tamir before shooting him—which is clearly false because the video makes clear there was no time for the cop to have given any commands before shooting Tamir.
The truth is, the cops drove up within a few feet of Tamir and shot him in less than two seconds. Abady criticized the “experts” for deeming it was “reasonable” for the cops to drive into a park and immediately open fire on an African-American boy they saw there. He said that the police themselves had created the dangerous situation, which they used to justify the killing of Tamir. Another lawyer, Earl Ward, said that the fact there have been no indictments of the cops shows that “Black lives don’t matter” and that “Tamir’s life doesn’t matter” to them—but that we say “Black lives do matter” and “Tamir’s life does matter!”
After the press conference, about a dozen people took to the streets with signs about the police murder of Tamir and chanted, “Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail.” Monday, October 19, we are going to Cleveland City Council to demand immediate indictments of the cops Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the killing of Tamir Rice. The prosecutor’s “expert” reports exonerating the cops must be met with outpourings of condemnation in the streets and in other ways to say: We demand the killing of Black and Brown people stop.
All out for Rise Up October in NYC on the 24th.
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