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

Criminal negligent manslaughter?

Do you have an evidence that the Cleveland Police Department protocol calls for a different procedure (serious question).

If you can show that the officers involved committed a "gross deviation from the standard of care" under Cleveland police procedure, you may have a case....... failing that, it will be very hard to have a case of criminally negligent homicide.

 

Basic common sense along with any worthwhile tactical training from any branch of law enforcement or military suggests that everything those officers did was against any semblance of common sense and tactical training.

Any LE officer or direct combat MOS poster here would agree with my statement. You DON'T DRIVE RIGHT UP TO A SUSPECTED ARMED INDIVIDUAL! You approach slowly, keep your distance, exit squad car and use squad car as cover and shout explicit commands.

My assumption of CPD's protocol for such a situation is an assumption based on my substantial experience and common sense.

Even Duncan McDonuts who usually always sides with LE in these types of threads agrees with me.

The very basic level of common sense to understand and utilize said tactic but flat out ignore it should be grounds for involuntary manslaughter due to criminal negligence.

 

^I think the problem Nook is trying to say is that the common sense you, myself, and others in this thread think should happen is not so much common sense. The cops pulling up to Rice is within standard operating protocol of how these situations are handled.

Now, if the manual is more specific and says stop your vehicle 20' from an armed suspect and these cops violated it, then yeah, you have grounds to say the cops broke standard operating protocol. But, as far as I know, and I'm not a cop nor do I know one, what these cops did was more or less standard, and that more or less covers a large range to give the cops more leeway.

 

No it isn't.

 

Then they need another line of employment if they are this cowardly

Rocket River

 

If the training provided by the Cleveland Police Department and the protocol is explicitly to not approach (as you describe) then you have a valid argument to put in front of a jury for negligent homicide.

However, if the training/protocol for the Cleveland Police Department is similar to or allows for approaching suspects in the manner used by the officers, then charges shouldn't be filed.

The issue of what the protocol should be is a separate issue.

 

If it isn't, then can you show some proof that it wasn't, as Nook suggested?

 

That may be the case, but that is a culture in the police force and needs to be addressed at a higher systemic level. I have had to depose police officers a number of times and have cross examined them on the stand and relied on them as witnesses. The truth is, they do not believe that they need to put another person's life above their own.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/how_police_are_trained_to_deal.html

So basically I'm right, Cleveland PD is wrong.

So by the rule of law, these officers should not have been indicted. However, a far more despicable can of worms opens up about an entire major U.S. city's tactical protocol is dangerously unsound and has cost the lives of multiple individuals.

The entire Police Department of Cleveland is tactically unsound. Is that what you want me to say, because ya, it probably is...

 

In this specific instance, being tactically sound would actually mitigate risk of their lives.

 

Yes.

If the Cleveland Police Department has rule/protocol "X", then an officer should not be charged with homicide for following the promulgated rule/protocol.

Assuming that is the case, then you fight to change the protocol/rules of the particular Police Department.

I SUSPECT that this is ultimately what is going to happen at a national level, you will see systemic training changes for police departments. I highly doubt that this is limited Cleveland.

 

That may be true but it is irrelevant to this particular case.

It comes down to the rules/protocol of the particular police agency.

 

The officer that fired the shot was the passenger (and was fairly new, IIRC), and unless it goes specifically against his training, charges just aren't appropriate. This was a horrible tragedy, and the police department as a whole should probably be held more accountable than the individual officer(s).

This differs from the Eric Garner case, where it certainly appeared the officer was in direct violation of police training, and in my opinion should have been charged with some form of crime, though a grand jury obviously felt differently.

 

I think most people agree that these officers' tactics were bad. From that article, the whole Cleveland PD training should be overhauled and they should probably make their officers have a refresher training course of new tactics and policies.

With that in mind, what the officers did was in standard protocol for the Cleveland PD, and as such they shouldn't be indicted for negligent charges. The whole Cleveland PD should be put under a microscope, and I can see them losing a civil suit.

 

Reasonable.

However, a mere layman with any ounce of common sense would have approached this situation entirely differently. The basic lack of it from these officers, suggests that they shouldn't be law enforcement officers.

 

True but if your not trying to surprise a suspect there is no reason to pull that close to any person suspected of having a gun it causes these types of issues.

 

There had been a robbery somewhere apparently and we fit the description. That's what they told us. This was on Richmond back when there was a million people who used to go to richmond. They didn't stop us as in pull us over, they pulled up in front of the car and jumped out guns drawn. The stop wasn't the point really. Whether they had a valid reason to do this or not isn't up to me. My point was that in that situation, the confusion, it's a reasonable assumption that anybody would need atleast a few seconds to process what's happening and what to do, especially in a life or death situation. Again, I can't speak for a fact of the protocols of police when dealing with an armed suspect. But if, the protocol allows for you to pull up right next to a suspect and jump out and shoot all in the span of a few seconds then yes this is completely justifiable and the protocol needs to be changed to atleast give a person a reasonable amount of time to comply. I'm not talking minutes but atleast 5 to 10 seconds. Again that's from my experience, when you're in that situation there are alot of things to factor. If however, what they did is not protocol when dealing with a suspect then they should be charged with manslaughter because what they did was negligent and cost a kid his life. That's my argument. I don't care about Lynch mobs and race and all that nonsense.

 

Why do we have toy guns as a society in the first place?