Today the Washington Post published an opinion piece co-authored by ECBAWM partner Zoe Salzman and Billy Joe Mills, founding partner of FirmEquity LLC. Both firms represent the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was brutally shot and killed by Cleveland police officers in 2014. In “Tamir Rice deserves justice. The Biden administration could finally deliver it,” Salzman and Mills explain why one of the top priorities for the Justice Department under the Biden administration should be the reopening of the case against the police officers who are responsible for Tamir’s death.

Noting that career DOJ attorneys had twice sought to convene a federal grand jury to bring charges against Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, the authors write, “[B]oth times those requests were stymied by Trump administration political appointees at the Justice Department. They sat on the requests for years, though the department typically rubber-stamps such requests in weeks. … [T]hey opted to run out the clock on the relevant statutes of limitations, which allowed them to silently kill the investigation without formally ending it.” After a whistleblower complaint that included these and other stalling tactics by the Justice Department, the investigation was formally closed without further explanation.

“The Justice Department is supposed to uphold the rule of law without yielding to the bruising tide of politics,” write Salzman and Mills. “We call on the Biden administration’s incoming attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has professed his commitment to the rule of law, to reopen the investigation into the killing of Tamir Rice.”