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posted by martyb on Friday June 02 2017, @11:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the two-and-a-half-years-later dept.

NPR, formerly National Public Radio, reports

Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, was fired by the Cleveland Police Department [May 30]. At a news conference, city authorities announced that the reason for his termination wasn't the deadly incident that brought him to national attention, but rather violations he committed in the course of his hiring process.

"Patrol officer Loehmann had been charged with rule violations concerning his application process to be considered a cadet with the Division of Police--specifically, answers he had provided on his personal history statement", Michael McGrath, the city's director of public safety, told reporters in prepared remarks.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains that Loehmann failed to disclose the full circumstances of how his time at a previous police department ended:

"Loehmann was allowed to resign from the Independence department after six months following a series of incidents where supervisors determined he was unfit to be a police officer.

"The disciplinary letter cites a letter in Loehmann's personnel file from Independence that says he was emotionally immature and had 'an inability to emotionally function'. The letter also cites an emotional breakdown Loehmann had on the gun range in Independence."

Cleveland authorities also announced that Frank Garmback, the officer driving the patrol car at the time Loehmann shot Tamir, would be suspended for 10 days for administrative rule violations of his own. He would also be required to take a tactical training course.

The penalties cap a review process conducted by Cleveland's Critical Incident Review Committee, or CIRC, in the wake of Tamir's death and the widespread protests it elicited. As the Plain Dealer reported last month, CIRC already "found no fault in the officers' actions leading up to, during and after the Nov. 22, 2014 shooting at Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland's West Side".


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  • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @03:28PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @03:28PM (#519402)

    i just now watched the video of the shooting and when they pulled up the kid goes for his waist for some reason. maybe panicking to get rid of the gun, but it was really bad/dumb timing. the dumb little bastard shouldn't have been walking around pointing a toy gun in the park either. his fat ass momma should have taught him better. especially, if crackers are everywhere trying to kill innocent black youth. however...

    i'm not saying the cops shouldn't face some kind of action. Should cops that are that worried about a armed subject rush up like idiots? No. Does the dept properly train these morons on how to approach an armed subject? if yes, then the "officers" should face negligent manslaughter charges or something. if no, then the supervisors should be charged with "negligent manslaughter by proxy". If pigs can't shoot armed criminals then what good are they? However, the suspected crime (in commission. not payback because someone said they were committing a crime previously.) needs to be a violent/serious crime or they need to be violating someone's immediate rights (even trespassing on private property when properly posted). possession (of anything except explosives, WMDs) alone is not good enough to kill over. They could have just as easily stopped 25-50 yards back and stayed in their car and gave instructions over the loud speaker or jumped out at their car and gave instructions. Then calmly walked over and cuffed the dumb ass little bastard. charge him with "violating the sanctity of city parks/scaring crackers with a fake gun" or something. if you can't disarm a teenager with a bee-bee gun without spraying bullets all over the park or killing said teenager (before you even give him a chance to comply and irrespective of his blackness quotient) than wtf do we need you for? any drunken vigilante will do and cost less.

    also, why are you just now doing proper due diligence on your hiring of this person who had an "emotional breakdown" on the firing range? bring that "supervisor" up on charges just for that or at least demote the sack of shit b/c this is what happens when these henchmen have a license to kill, but can't be bothered to do their jobs.

    a little accountability would go a long way in minimizing the number of these instances.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday June 02 2017, @07:34PM (#519532)

    The dumb little bastard shouldn't have been walking around pointing a toy gun in the park either.

    It's legal for a kid to do that. Heck, it's perfectly legal in Ohio to walk through a public park with a real loaded AR-15 over your shoulder.

    Does the dept properly train these morons on how to approach an armed subject? if yes, then the "officers" should face negligent manslaughter charges or something.

    Yes, they did train the cops on how to approach a possibly-armed suspect, and the cops in question did not remotely follow the established department procedure for handling this. And if they had followed procedure, this whole thing should have amounted to was from a distance, yelling "Hey, put your hands in the air, and keep 'em where I can see 'em! Now I'm going to come over there and pat you down for any weapons you might be carrying." Then they'd approach, and the conversation might have gone something like this: "What's this? Oh, it's a toy? Let me take a closer look at it. OK, you need to understand something - you almost got yourself shot today because some people thought this was a real gun. I'm going to put some orange tape on the tip like it's supposed to have, you're going to put this away, and we're going to tell your mother what's happened here today. Do you understand?"

    Also, there's no such thing as "negligent manslaughter". The proper charges here include manslaughter (for the shooting), assault (for beating up his sister), perjury (for lying about everything in sworn statements), and obstruction of justice (for deliberately trying to destroy evidence).

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:08PM (#519909)

      "Also, there's no such thing as "negligent manslaughter"."

      i knew that. the whole post was sarcasm mixed with reality and in this case, laws that don't exist but maybe should, as we are woefully short on laws in this country. i thought it was obvious. :)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:05PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:05PM (#519553)

    A responsible black parent knows that there are things that they must tell their children as soon as the kids no longer look like cherubs.
    This is to decrease the possibility that the parents will have to come down to the morgue to claim the corpse of their child.

    High on the list:
    You are always very deferential to cops.
    You don't carry anything that might be mistaken for a weapon.

    Not being subject to the same levels of prejudice from cops, White people don't seem to be aware of the existence of "The Talk". [google.com]

    ...and a black parent who bought a black child a toy weapon is an irresponsible parent.
    This is not to excuse the homicidal cop.
    It's acknowledging the reality of a racist country where cops use people of color for target practice and don't go to prison.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @09:02PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @09:02PM (#519575)

      If anything, white parents don't see it as "The Talk" because they regularly teach it. It's just normal upbringing. Don't fuck around with cops if you want to live.

      Cops shoot more white people than black people.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @09:57PM (#519591)

        What is included in this instruction goes WAY beyond interactions with cops.

        In a society where you are a racial minority that has been oppressed for 4 centuries and The System is uninterested in altering that, instructions on behavior given to the children of The White Majority is nowhere near as detailed.

        The Emmett Till story is an example.
        He grew up in Chicago, which, in 1955, was de facto segregated.
        What behavior was acceptable in Mississippi (by Blacks and by Whites) was, however, quite different from even the practices/prejudices that he was used to.

        For interacting with a White woman while visiting his kin in the Deep South, he was tortured to the point of gross disfigurement and murdered.

        Thinking that you understand what "The Talk" is demonstrates just how different the Black Experience is from the White Experience in the USA and shows how clueless you are in thinking that what you saw on "Good Times" on TeeVee was anything like reality.

        Cops shoot more white people than black people

        Black people are less than 13 percent of the USA's population.
        This gives a sizable margin before the numbers start lining up.
        Your statement is the typical horseshit spewed by people who are willfully ignorant.
        Stop consuming Faux Noise. It's filling your head with nonsense.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:11PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:11PM (#519598)

          Well, that or they don't listen to their elders.

          Who runs from cops? Black kids do. It's like running from a lion or wolf pack; it only encourages them to be more aggressive. You're sealing your doom when you do this.

          Most white kids don't do that shit. They know the deal: don't fuck with cops.

          If black kids got "The Talk" and white kids didn't, the above situation would be reversed.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:39PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:39PM (#519934)

            Some of the running is due to stupidity but some of it is an uncontrollable reaction to slave catchers which is probably encoded into their biology. This could even happen to anyone if they get pulled over/beaten/incarcerated by cops enough growing up. i now get pretty nervous or excited/pissed when cops pull me over and i was never beaten myself by cops. (many were fair to me, in fact) I didn't used to. It's just built up over time.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:27PM (#519930)

      don't be ridiculous. i'm well aware of "the talk". i've seen the professional victims on tv lamenting the evil racists trying to kill their innocent black youth because whites are all weak and scared of their awesome blackness. It's always some otherwise respectable black people, who i could empathize with if it weren't the fact that they were being useful idiots pushing some white guilt agenda. I said her fat, welfare potato chip eating, 3 liter walmart soda drinking ass should have "taught him better", not brainwash him into thinking he's some kind of freedom whiner/professional sack of crap that should go play "shoot the cracker" in the park even though he's 6 foot tall or some shit.

      it looked like to me he was pointing the bee bee gun at the evil crackers/joggers after they went by. another self loathing, white jogger rapist-in-training. i'm guessing the fascist henchmen were pissed when they got the call of some negroid teen/young man pointing a gun at joggers or whatever "well-to-do white lady"(nice version) description came in. "a black guy is pointing a gun at people when they jog by!!!! I'm too dumb to recognize the tiny hole at the end of the gun or the fact that the whole thing was plastic, just like i can't identify the make nor model or maybe even the goddamn color of the getaway car that robbed my house!!!".

      like i said: a tragedy of stupidity.