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".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @12:01PM (16 children)
I'm sure that those making the decisions wanted to maintain 2 ideas simultaneously:
A. That police who shoot unarmed black people are never criminally responsible.
B. That the cops who shot Tamir Rice needed to be punished, somehow.
They were trying to balance the views of the police union (A) and the majority black population of Cleveland (B). I'm sure they feel like they took the moderate course.
The simple fact is that there is no possible way the shooting was legal: Rice was not committing a crime, the officers did not give him time to respond lawfully to their orders (he had less than 2 seconds to react), the officers completely lied about what happened (until caught by a security camera), the officers did not make the slightest attempt to save Rice's life, and the cops followed this up by roughing up and handcuffing his sister for trying to help him or at least hold him in her arms as he was dying. The whole thing looks much more like a drive-by by uniformed cops than a proper police action.
The city fathers know all this, but don't want to piss off the cops and the white people who unconditionally support the cops no matter how stupid they are, especially when the cops go after black people (Ohio is one of the most racist states in the country). So instead, they're firing the officer for other reasons as an attempt to throw a bone to everybody who's upset about this and hoping that will shut people up. But it won't, or at least it shouldn't.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @12:23PM
What do you expect from a city with many fathers and no mother?... Only macho role models will do that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Friday June 02 2017, @12:37PM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by inertnet on Friday June 02 2017, @03:00PM (2 children)
It's also a wrong signal to bad apple police officers, who could get the idea that they can get away with anything as long as they fill in their papers correctly. Some may not handle this empowering message very well.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday June 03 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
A couple decades ago I called for higher police pay and higher standards. Now I'm just saying higher standards. I'm not saying every cop out there is paid what he's worth, but it's no longer a glaring issue. In most areas they are paying enough to expect above average intelligence and some skills and focus and seriousness about the job. That's what we should expect.
But they aren't looking, in many jurisdictions, for intelligence. http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @08:04AM
A few of these obviously criminally guilty cops need to be dealt with, and left somewhere public as an example.
The people responsible for this either need to avoid being caught, or allow themselves to be caught because they are part of a larger organization and are capable of not divulging intelligence on it under the most extreme of duress.
Only at that point will the current level of corruption be dealt with. When the judicial fails, it is up to the citizenry to remind the establishment who holds the reins of power and what expectations they have in order for the rule of law to be re-established so they don't have to.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday June 02 2017, @02:00PM (10 children)
It is justice that doesn't feel like justice. I'm sure the city wanted to fire him. They needed to do so in a way that could not possibly be challenged by the police union. So they reached for an incontrovertible reason to fire him and found one.
I think in the last few years, more cities, and even some police departments have realized that they have a problem.
The real sea change will be when police unions realize that they have a problem.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @05:43PM (8 children)
They wanted to fire him, but they didn't want to jail him. That's the part that makes it not justice. If I (as someone who's never been a cop) had done what he did, I'd be on trial for manslaughter, assault (on the sister), obstruction of justice, and most likely a few other charges.
So now he's going to apply for a cop job in some other jurisdiction and continue to do work to which he is completely unsuited.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 02 2017, @06:01PM
That is an excellent point.
Of course, if the city had tried to prosecute, it would cost money and time. (But that shouldn't be a reason not to do it.) And the police union would fight it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:55PM (5 children)
There are great cops, evil cops, and lots of mediocre cops. It's possible to have a bad day and fuck up your job. If an ordinary fuck-up puts you on trial or dead, would you take that job?
I already don't want to be a cop, but without some protection from fuck-ups? Screw that job. I'd rather live in a homeless shelter.
We need lots of cops -- it is like teachers and janitors and truck drivers, not like pastry chefs and mechanical engineers and actors. We thus can't pay them enough to justify taking insane liability risks. We simply couldn't hire any cops without giving them some extra protection from fuck-ups.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @10:40PM (3 children)
There are 3 problems with your thinking:
1. My mistakes don't leave bodies of innocent people on the ground. You are describing these events in a way that amounts to "I shot and killed an innocent person, whoopsie daisy! Hey, are we still cool?"
2. When I screw up, I do my best to mitigate the damage. These officers didn't: Neither one made any kind of effort to see if Rice was still alive, nor to save his life if he was still alive. A charitable interpretation is that they had a complete disregard for the value of his life. A less charitable interpretation is that they were reduce the chance that an inconvenient witness could testify against them.
3. When I screw up, I apologize for it. These cops didn't, and instead took the stance of "I did nothing wrong, nothing bad happened."
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, @04:40AM (2 children)
Your mistakes don't leave bodies of innocent people on the ground, so you don't have much to fear. Performing your job doesn't expose you to much risk.
Yes yes, if you somehow did kill a few people, you'd be on trial, but this is not likely to happen. You have no need to worry. You are not deterred from taking the job due to liability.
We're asking people to perform a job that has a crazy-high risk of a fuck-up killing an innocent person. Nobody with half a brain will do that if they don't get special protection.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 03 2017, @11:22AM (1 child)
If they NEED that protection they've no right to be in the job.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @05:00AM
OK, no cops then, because none were available to be hired. You won't mind paying the local organized crime syndicate for protection, right?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:21AM
An ordinary fuck-up by a teacher, janitor, truck driver, pastry chef, mechanical engineer or actor could (in three of the examples will) cost them their job immediately. Why not cops?
If an ordinary fuck-up by a teacher, janitor, truck driver, pastry chef, mechanical engineer or actor results in somebody's death they WILL face trial. Why not cops?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:53PM
If I saw fucking hipsters with Mosin-Nagants all around me at the range I'd pull my Glock 9 mil on them too!
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday June 03 2017, @09:38AM
Justice needs to be tied to responsibility. There's a lot of talk about the person who pulled the trigger, but what about the person who allowed someone who'd had an emotional breakdown to wander the streets with a badge and a gun and be put into high-stress situations?
If someone working in a factory fails to follow safety procedures operating dangerous machinery and someone dies, then they'll probably be tried for manslaughter. If their manager had been aware that they were not safe to operate the machine, or if the company did not have adequate procedures in place so that they did know things that they could be reasonably expected to know, then someone else at the company will be liable as well.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 02 2017, @12:44PM (1 child)
Huh? What does this mean? Several years ago (2010 apparently), NPR decided to emphasize calling itself NPR [npr.org] as it had for decades. But the decision was just one of consistency for a combination of "branding" and to deemphasize radio as the only component (given internet presence, etc.). But its legal name is National Public Radio, as it has always been.
I assume that's what this statement is about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:21PM
I like comedian/political commentator Jimmy Dore.[1] [google.com]
(If you think Jon Stewart or Mort Sahl, you won't be far off.)
For the way it has sold its soul to the corporations, he likes to call it National Petroleum Radio.
He also calls the TeeVee stuff the Petroleum Broadcasting System.
[1] If you want more, change the :m (month) to :y (year) or just remove the entire tbs= parameter.
Removing +-inurl:premium will also show you the paid content.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Friday June 02 2017, @01:49PM (3 children)
Lying on an application? Who would have thought?
"Do you have more than 9000 years experience in BSXMLNETJSBUZZ? The automated application database will automatically ignore any applicants that answer NO. If you answer yes, and we hire you, we won't understand why this is impossible until we decide to fire your ass and see that you lied"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @05:15PM
You're fired for leaking the trade secret of how we always reserve one excuse to fire you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:29PM
Trump's son-in-law omitted stuff on his paperwork to get his federal security clearance.
He's in hot water for that. [google.com]
Now might be the time to mention that they sent Al Capone to Alcatraz for tax evasion.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @07:39PM
We don't hand software developers a gun and a taser and a nightstick and pay them out of the public treasury. We're supposed to be holding people whose job includes deadly force to a higher standard than that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 02 2017, @02:16PM (7 children)
Two men come racing up, jump out of the car, and shoot you dead, without uttering a word. That's murder. The only way it MIGHT NOT be murder, is if you're an adult, at war, wearing a uniform, and the other side ambushes you. Cleveland avoided any liability with this decision, and that's all that matters to Cleveland.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 02 2017, @05:38PM
But now Stewie is mad.
Cleveland better not have a bath tonight.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @05:50PM (5 children)
It should be pointed out that urban cops, like these guys are, often see themselves as being at war (even though they aren't), they are wearing a uniform, and they think of young poor black guys as the enemy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 02 2017, @06:04PM (4 children)
Maybe they think of poor any-color any-gender as the enemy.
Maybe they think of non-white any-economic-status as the enemy.
Maybe any non-police are the enemy.
I suppose it depends on which city, which PD. Definitely tribalism. Or us good guys against our current definition of bad guys.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @07:17PM (3 children)
I lived in metro Cleveland for the better part of a decade. There are some very professional cops and departments in the area (e.g. Lakewood, OH has an excellent record and responded extremely well to reported crimes), but also plenty of crooked cops (e.g. East Cleveland, OH had basically their entire police department sent to jail for shaking down drug dealers and prostitutes for freebies and cash rather than arresting them). The crooked cops tend to gravitate towards Cleveland, and there are also certain inner-ring suburbs and precincts that are known among cops as the places you go if your reason for becoming a cop is because you want to rough up black people (according to a friend of mine who was a former cop).
In Cleveland, young black guys are seen as the enemy by cops. Young Hispanic guys are seen as at least a potential enemy. White guys are decidedly not.
This is the same department that started to chase a black couple because their car had backfired, sent over 60 cars chasing after them, pulled them over and fired 130 shots into the car without giving them a chance to surrender peacefully. This is the same department that leaves over 50% of murder cases completely unsolved, laughed in the faces of poor black families who reported their family member missing (they had been murdered by a serial killer), and left 3 teenage girls chained in a basement for years because their entire investigation of tips that would have led to their recovery was to knock on the guy's door and shrug when nobody answered.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:40PM (2 children)
Cleveland cop Michael Brelo jumped on the hood of a car and fired 15 rounds through the windshield. [google.com]
Those guys watch entirely too many cowboy/1930s gangster movies.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 02 2017, @08:03PM (1 child)
This should be changed in the police academy curriculum.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @10:42PM
Yes, obviously they should instead be made to watch the Police Academy movies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @03:28PM (8 children)
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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday June 02 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
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.
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
"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)
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)
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)
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)
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
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
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.