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Tamir Rice
The "police use-of-force" expert who wrote one of two reports that deemed the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November was "reasonable" was also instrumental in clearing Colorado officers in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl.
S. Lamar Sims, a senior deputy district attorney in Denver, Colorado, was hired by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office to conduct an independent review a Cleveland, Ohio police officer's use-of-force against Rice ahead of a grand jury trial. The inquiry will attempt to determine whether Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, used reasonable force in shooting the 12-year-old Rice, who was black, because he was perceived as being "a serious threat."
Sims' 52-page
report was released on October 10. The report will be one of several items a grand jury will consider when weighing whether Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, will be charged with a crime.
"There can be no doubt that Rice's death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking," Sims wrote in the report. "However, I conclude that Officer Loehmann's belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was
objectively reasonable as was his response to that perceived threat."
On
November 22, 2014, the Cleveland Police Department received reports concerning a male with a gun at a playground. A cruiser with Officers Loehmann and Garmback arrived on the scene shortly after. Police said Loehmann engaged when Rice reached into his waistband, and that officers did not realize that he was carrying a toy weapon. Loehmann fired two shots at Rice, which struck him in the abdomen, and the boy subsequently died from his wounds in hospital the following day.
Rice's "gun" was found to be an Airsoft replica. It lacked the orange safety feature visualization to show that it was, in fact, a fake.
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