The announcement today by the City of Cleveland that the officers involved in the shooting death of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice have been disciplined has only added insult to the pain and grief of the Rice family. Although pleased with the termination of Officer Timothy Loehmann, the decision says nothing about his unlawful actions in shooting young Tamir without cause or justification. Loehmann was terminated not for causing Tamir’s death but rather for lying on his employment application.

The Rice family is disheartened by the decision to suspend Officer Frank Garmback for a mere 10 days where it has been determined that he failed to employ proper tactics when he drove directly up to Tamir thus contributing to the chain of events that resulted in Tamir’s shooting.

Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, described the discipline as “deeply disappointing. I am relieved Loehmann has been fired because he should never have been a police officer in the first place—but he should have been fired for shooting my son in less than one second, not just for lying on his application. And Garmback should be fired too, for his role in pulling up too close to Tamir. As we continue to grieve for Tamir, I hope this is a call for all of us to build stronger communities together.”

Tamir’s family is represented by ECBAWM attorneys Jonathan Abady, Earl Ward, and Zoe Salzman, together with William Mills of FirmEquity and Subodh Chandra of The Chandra Law Firm LLC.

On April 25, 2016, the City of Cleveland agreed to a $6 million payment to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit that arose from the tragic death of Tamir Rice. This settlement has received extensive coverage in the national and local press.

Read coverage of the settlement in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Amsterdam News. Read a full profile of the case in GQ.

Listen to an interview with Jonathan Abady on NPR’s The Brian Lehrer Show.

Watch an interview with Zoe Salzman on Democracy Now!.

The City of Cleveland has agreed to payment of $6 million to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit involving the tragic death of Tamir Rice. Although historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life. Tamir was 12 years old when he was shot and killed by police — a young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise.

In a situation such as this, there is no such thing as closure or justice. Nothing will bring Tamir back. His unnecessary and premature death leaves a gaping hole for those who knew and loved him that can never be filled.

Regrettably, Tamir’s death is not an isolated event. The problem of police violence, especially in communities of color, is a crisis plaguing our nation. It is the sincere hope of the Rice family that Tamir’s death will stimulate a movement for genuine change in our society and our nation’s policing so that no family ever has to suffer a tragedy such as this again.

Tamir’s family was represented by ECBAWM attorneys Jonathan Abady, Earl Ward, and Zoe Salzman, and local counsel Subodh Chandra. The New York Times and the New York Daily News, among many other outlets, covered the settlement.

Today, more than a year after Cleveland police shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a grand jury voted not to indict the shooter. Tamir’s family is saddened and disappointed by this outcome–but not surprised.

It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy 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 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. These are the sort of “experts” we would expect the officer’s criminal defense attorney to hire—not the prosecutor.

Then, Prosecutor McGinty allowed the police officers to take the oath and read prepared statements to the grand jury without answering any questions on cross-examination. Even though it is black letter law that taking the stand waives the Fifth Amendment right to be silent, the prosecutor did not seek a court order compelling the officers to answer questions or holding the officers in contempt if they continued to refuse. This special treatment would never be given to non-police suspects.

The way Prosecutor McGinty has mishandled the grand jury process has compounded the grief of this family.

The Rice family is grateful for all the community support they have received and urges people who want to express their disappointment with how Prosecutor McGinty has handled this process to do so peacefully and democratically. We renew our request that the Department of Justice step in to conduct a real investigation into this tragic shooting of a 12-year-old child.

Representatives of the mother, sister, and estate administrator of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy whom Cleveland police officers shot and killed in November 2014, wrote to the Department of Justice today formally requesting that the federal government intervene to investigate both the boy’s death and local prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s handling of the case.

For months, the Rice family and their representatives have expressed growing concern about unfairness and bias in the grand-jury process. Evidence of that bias and unfairness became so extreme that the family in October 2015 called for recusal of Mr. McGinty and appointment of an independent prosecutor.

Last week, on December 7, 2015, the prosecutor’s misconduct intensified even further.

Because it was apparent that the presentation to the grand jury was so unfair, the family was forced to retain its own experts in an attempt to have the grand jury consider accurate information on what actually happened the day Tamir Rice was killed. Although local prosecutors promised they would present those experts to the grand jury in a fair manner, in a remarkable turn of events, they sabotaged testimony of the family’s experts through a series of highly unprofessional and inappropriate tactics before the grand jury.

The family’s two experts, Jeff Noble and Roger Clark, nationally recognized figures in the fields of law enforcement and excessive-force policy, left the grand jury last week stating that in their many decades of experience in state and federal courts across the country, they had never encountered such unfair, biased, unprofessional, and hostile treatment by a prosecutor’s office.

This duplicitous mistreatment of the family’s experts stands in stark contrast to the favorable treatment afforded the officers who killed Tamir Rice when they were allowed to read self-serving, prepared statements to the grand jury, without ever being cross-examined, even though the law is clear that by taking the stand to read their statements, the officers waived their Fifth Amendment privilege to be silent.

This latest act of prosecutorial misconduct provides further evidence that the grand jury process has been irreparably harmed in this very important case. It is clear local prosecutors are doing everything in their power to exonerate the officers, no matter what the evidence shows. They are not engaged in the transparent, fair, and thorough investigation of the truth that they promised Tamir Rice’s family, the citizens of Cleveland, and the nation, ensuring that the officers will never face justice.

Read ECBAWM’s December 7 letter to Prosecutor McGinty here:

December 7, 2015

Re:       Disclosure of Recommendation to the Grand Jury

Dear Mr. McGinty:

As you know, this firm, The Chandra Law Firm LLC, and FirmEquity represent Samaria Rice; her daughter T.R.; and Tamir Rice’s estate. This letter follows our recent meeting with you on November 24, 2015 at your offices.

During that meeting, you confirmed that it is normal practice for, and you intend to, make a recommendation to the grand jury about whether to indict Officers Loehmann and Garmback on criminal charges. In our meeting, Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, respectfully asked just one thing of you—to tell her and the public in advance what your intended recommendation to the grand jury will be. You did not commit at that time to following in this case what you recognized was standard procedure.

There are countless examples of prosecutors and your office stating to the public the intention to seek charges from grand juries. Just one notable example is the case of serial rapist and kidnapper Ariel Castro, in which you were quoted publicly as saying: “I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, and each act of aggravated murder for terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetrated,” and “We are presenting additional evidence to the grand jury next week and the week after. We expect we are going to request further indictments.” Of course, such statements, whether announced publicly or promised privately to crime victims, are your office’s (and every prosecutor’s) regular practice.

There is no basis to depart from this normal practice here, and it would be disturbing if you did.  There is no statute, case, or ethics rule that prevents you from announcing your intention to seek criminal charges (or not) against the officers responsible for killing this 12-year-old boy. You have already taken the position in this case that Ohio Criminal Rule of Procedure 6(E), which protects the secrecy of grand jury information, does not apply to intended future conduct. That was ostensibly, in part, your justification for releasing what we believe to be highly prejudicial, unsupported, and unjustified “expert” reports and unsworn written officer “statements.”

If you truly intend to be “transparent,” you must disclose to the public and the crime victim’s family whether you intend to seek criminal charges (and if so, which charges), just as you did in the Ariel Castro case and others. Your failure to do so would be inconsistent with your stated commitment to be fair and impartial. Please confirm you will not create a special exception to the normal practice and will disclose your recommendation to the grand jury in advance of making it.

Sincerely,
Jonathan S. Abady, Earl S. Ward, Zoe Salzman