...Police officers don’t steer clear of these kinds of consequences merely because they stay quiet about the misdeeds of other cops. They have help. Not only are there structural standards for legal killings that favor an officer’s “objectively reasonable” survival instincts over the life of an unarmed citizen, but also the very lawyers charged with seeking punishment for the officers can enforce those standards. The Tamir Rice investigation is the clearest example yet of why independent investigators and prosecutors must be assigned by state authorities to every case of police violence.
That was made clear at Monday’s press conference, where Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced that a grand jury had determined that no criminal charges would be filed against Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the two Cleveland police officers involved in Rice’s death. Given the lack of success lately in that arena, the Rice family had been girding themselves for this outcome. But the grand jury got a big push from McGinty himself, who revealed that he’d recommended that no charges be filed, in direct contradiction to the mandate of his elected office: to faithfully seek indictments and prosecute cases so as to make his jurisdiction a safer place to live. “That was also my recommendation and that of our office after reviewing the investigation and the law,” he said on Monday.
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It was a presser you might see a defense attorney give. Their performance lent credence to earlier criticisms from Tamir’s mother, Samaria, and her attorneysconcerning the behavior of McGinty and his office before the grand jury: badgering and mocking expert witnesses provided by the family, weakening their own case while defending the officers’ due process. Having committed this obvious a dereliction of duty and then crowing about it, McGinty should resign immediately.
