The killing of a 12-year-old black boy by a white cop shortly after he was hired by Cleveland police after being fired as unsuitable for police work by a neighboring city’s police department triggered a public firestorm, and is one of the nation’s highest-profile white-on-black police killings to occur since the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, incident called attention to egregious police violence against black people in America.
The cop in the Ferguson case was exonerated by a grand jury after a prosecutor widely seen as biased in favor of the police made a lackluster effort — if he made any effort at all — to obtain an indictment.
In the Cleveland case, Prosecutor Tim McGinty faces similar suspicions of police bias, but has refused to step aside or seek appointment of a special prosecutor to handle potential charges against the cops involved in the Tamir Rice shooting. Now, Rice’s family is outraged to learn that McGinty has been presenting witnesses and evidence to a grand jury for at least a week without their or the public’s knowledge.
There’s more. Even though he’s empaneled a grand jury, McGinty has refused to say there’s probable cause to indict the officers, and he’s selectively released reports saying the shooting was justified. Plus, the police union seems more than happy with the process:
“We’ve cooperated fully,” said Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association. “I have all the confidence in the world in the grand jury system and our system of justice.”
That, by itself, is another sure sign the fix is in. Even though this was a blatant killing of a child by a disgraced cop who opened fire without warning the moment he pulled up in his cruiser, don’t hold your breath expecting this killer to face a trial or punishment.
Read the story here. A video of the shooting, showing the cop never gave the kid a chance to drop his harmless toy gun, is below (warning: graphic content).