Grand Jury Decides Cop Had No Choice But To Shoot 12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Dead, Oh Well
Sorry, kid, but you had to die
Shocking no one but disgusting everyone whose heart isn't made of dog vomit, a grand jury has determined Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann was justified in shooting a 12-year-old black child dead in November 2014. Thus, after more than a year of investigation, Loehmann -- whose daddy said his son's a real good boy and had no choice but to kill that child, out of self-defense, of course -- will not be indicted, will not stand trial, and will never EVER go to jail. Neither will his getaway driver, Officer Frank Garmback.
As you may recall, Tamir Rice had committed the heinous crime of playing in a park, with a toy gun, when a concerned citizen reported the apparent crime -- including that the toy gun was "probably fake." Police arrived on the scene, diligently spent TWO WHOLE SECONDS assessing the situation, and decided the child was comin' right for 'em, with his toy gun and his (probably irrelevant but we'll gratuitously inject race into it anyway) blackness, and had to be put down. Bang bang, black child playing alone in a park neutralized, thanks to Cleveland's finest.
You can watch the video again, if you have some steel wool and bleach on hand, for your brain, in case you are wondering whether we're exaggerating for the sake of snark. (SPOILER: We're not.)
[contextly_sidebar id="sxG9a3zx0vf7kJhB03tH4alpe66VvIPb"]During the extremely thorough long-ass investigation, we learned all sorts of really important and germane information: that according to the Cleveland Police Union, Tamir Rice might have technically been a 12-year-old child, but he sure seemed like a fully grown black man on a mission to kill some cops; that investigating the police officer was considered a fairly low priority by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department, because hey, they'd looked at a lot of documents and stuff; that Tamir's father had a criminal record, ergo, the child was practically asking to be shot; and that Officer Loehmann basically flunked out of cop training in some other town with slightly higher standards for its police force, like preferring cops who don't suck so hard with a gun, no amount of training in the world will make them not suck.
Silver lining, though. According to prosecutor Tim McGinty, during Monday's press conference announcing there would be no indictment of Officer Loehman, for shooting a child dead, everyone has learned some real valuable lessons, like how cops should wear body cams so we can watch the videos of them killing children up close, and also maybe the HR department should do a more thorough background check before letting epic FAILs run around playing police officer with deadly weapons. Like that.
We're sure Tamir Rice's family will take great comfort in knowing that while there was absolutely no way police could have prevented Rice's death, they'll try awful hard to prevent any such completely necessary deaths of any other children in the future.
[Live press conference via Cleveland.com]
