No indictment for officer who shot Tamir Rice; reasonable to assume officer was threatened

I believe there is a systemic problem.

I don't blame the officer.

Generally, for a police officer, the calculus is that the life of an innocent person is worth less than the life of a police officer. If your options as an officer are put your own life in danger, or kill someone who might be innocent, you kill the potential innocent.

The most important thing for police, reinforced daily through cop speak is that the officer "makes sure that he always come home at night" first and foremost. The mantra is repeated every day.

There is spillover military mindset which reinforces this, and where that attitude is more appropriate.

In the USA, where it is better that "100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer", that is not appropriate. The ****ty bottom line of being a police officer is that you are paid to put yourself between innocent people and trouble. That is the job.

A single innocent person shot by a police officer should always be considered a failure, but it isn't by police. I'm sure this guy and his buddies all feel totally justified - giving lip service to the idea that it is sad, but that he "did what he had to do", and that is what the system has warped itself into reinforcing.

In an insular system like policing, where the police have come to view themselves as under siege by and separate from the public, it is totally natural for them to come to a calculus where police are worth more than innocent people. It is a problem of reintegrating police into society and disabusing them of their self image as some sort of secular priesthood.

I'm not totally upset or anything. I don't think the officer did anything he wasn't trained to do. I think the problem is the system and mindset has been set up by cops to serve the desires of the cops to the detriment of the public. The problem is with civil leaders letting the inmates run the asylum, and setting the terms of dialogue and the agenda.

 

A grand jury only sees evidence as it is presented by a prosecutor. If they don't want to prosecute, they can present a shoddy case and create a no-indictment result anytime they want. We've seen in plenty of times before. There is plenty of reason to believe the guy would ultimately be found not guilty, but probable cause is an extremely low bar to meet - if a prosecutor really wanted to prosecute, it's not hard to present enough evidence in this case to a grand jury. A judge already previously found there to be probable cause.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/u...officers-in-tamir-rice-death.html?smid=tw-bna

 

Ah, so it's a conspiracy. Gotcha.

 

#1 What is the point of a state investigation if the response is always going to be to launch a federal investigation and point that out whenever people are unhappy with the state investigation.

#2 Senseless? Absolutely, although the facts are not that simple. Rice was 5'7" and 190 LBS with an airpistol that had the orange tip removed that he was waiving in the air in a high crime area.

#3 Yes, it was at a minimum very callous, the cops were firing shots within seconds of appearing at the scene and the dispatch did not tell the officer that the witness said the gun may have been fake.

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/28/461293703/grand-jury-declines-to-indict-police-officers-in-tamir-rice-investigation

 

It's a black kid. . .so they want to gloat

Every seen a picture of a Lynching. . . the people gloating here
are the same type that stood around the lynching smiling and drinking lemonade . . . they in the crowd during the Hitler Rallies . . .

It is what it is . ..

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=271398

Rocket River

 

The officer might use some comments made here to sue Tamir's family for the suffering he went through before he was acquitted

 

True
That is not the mindset of ANYONE who is a 'HERO'
this is why most cops are not nor will ever be . . .'Heroes'

Rocket River

 

Such irony in that people like you are upset that you didn't get your lynching. Unfortunately for people like you, justice prevailed and no wrongful charges were brought. It's the exact same as the Micheal Brown case, a black person died thus there needed to be a lynching. Hopefully people won't burn down a town over the disappointment this time.

 

Another bigotexx scumbag troll thread.

 

It does seem like a large tactical error for the cop to drive straight up to Rice instead of giving him and his partner some distance and cover. Maybe it was because they thought he was a threat to run? Hard to say, but I do agree that the cops should have distanced themselves more.

There should be a departmental review of police tactics for sure. I'm not sure if there's enough to say they should be fired. As for the evidence, if there wasn't enough of an argument to indict, there's no way the cops would be found guilty of wrongdoing. It's an unfortunate incident where a young boy lost his life, but kids should learn to not play around with realistic looking guns in public.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...fatally-shot-tamir-rice-had-been-judged-unfit

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/cleveland_police_officer_who_s.html#incart_m-rpt-1

"A police officer who shot a 12-year-old dead in a Cleveland park late last month had been judged unfit for police service two years earlier by a small suburban force where he worked for six months, according to records released on Wednesday."

Sounds like Negligence on the part of Cleveland PD

Rocket River

 

Officers probably shouldn't have been indicted, but to start a thread gloating about it is very immature. Some need to incite others for some perverse pleasure, but other posters lack the mental fortitude to simply ignore the goading.

You all need to try harder.

 

I see the family is on the "it's a conspiracy" bandwagon

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Family of Tamir Rice accuses prosecutor of sabotaging case and condemns criminal-justice system in statement. <a href="https://t.co/owIML3bWJq">https://t.co/owIML3bWJq</a></p>&mdash; CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) <a href="https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/681629409430900736">December 29, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

I have no idea - I haven't paid attention to this case much at all. My point is that a non-indictment is not really indicative of a weak case when it comes to cop shootings, unfortunately, There is a long history of prosecutors not wanting to prosecute these cases and grand juries are intentionally designed to be easy to manipulate - the prosecutor purposely only shows one side of a case and there is no defense or cross-examination. It's essentially a rubber stamp - the only time you ever hear of a grand jury failing to indict is when it comes to cop shootings.

The Ferguson Grand Jury was an excellent example - regardless of whether he was guilty, there was more than enough evidence for a grand jury to indict. But the prosector put on the defense's case - putting up conflicting witnesses and challenging their accounts - that's something that's never done. He dragged it out for months when grand juries should take a few days. The prosecutor also had deep ties to the police department and ultimately had no interest in prosecuting, whether due to bias or because he really felt the evidence wasn't there. Besides the shooting itself, the tragedy of Ferguson was not that a corrupt cop got away with anything (he would likely have been found not guilty in a trial), but it was that that the process that occurred was a validation of all the concerns the black community has brought up - the prosecutor went way out of his way to ensure a non-indictment so he could blame the non-prosecution on the Grand Jury instead of making the case himself.

I have no idea if it's the same here, but there is a history of this and some recent precedent.

 

Agreed, an excellent example of a Grand Jury choosing to not indict an innocent man despite the wishes of the community.