The cool and calculated indifference displayed by officer Tim Loehmann after he’d fired what would prove to be fatal shots into the torso of 12-year-old Tamir Rice — he simply stood there afterwards with his hands on his hips as the child’s lifeblood was oozing out of his body — is beyond shocking … it clearly crosses the line into depravity. No wonder the city continued to drag its feet for so long over making the video public: It’s shameful.
No matter the cops’ logic for the shooting they and the police union have attempted to explain away, there can be no logical explanation for their failure to respond and offer first aid to a dying child. They simply stood there and watched him die. Of course union leaders said that it wasn’t their job to help — which sort of makes sense, since their only job seemingly is to kill people, not save lives.
Nonetheless, police supporters who chatter away on websites never addressed Loehmann’s abhorrent behavior in their comments; they instead focused on the legality of his actions, calling it a “clean shoot” as if he was participating in some kind of deer hunt, not in the taking of a human life. Nor did these right wingers address the necessity or the morality of the cop’s actions, falling back on their position that he was within his “right” to kill the boy. In other words, the cop was confronted with a situation where he could legally kill someone and not be held accountable for his action … because it was a “clean shoot.” I, like many others, hope and pray that he’s wrong, and that he will be held accountable.
Within two minutes of Tamir’s shooting, his 14-year-old sister, seeing him lying on the ground, runs towards him only to be tackled by a cop and taken down. Another cop joins the first in containing the girl (who by that time is hysterical) and she is handcuffed and put in the back of a police cruiser less than ten feet from where her brother lie dying.
What’s the response of the online wing nuts? “It’s her own fault how she was treated since she didn’t immediately obey police commands.” If this isn’t Nazi thinking I don’t know what is: A teenager sees her sibling lying on the ground shot, and she’s supposed to simply follow what a cop tells her to do! The amazing thing is, she didn’t also get shot or at least tazed.
It could very well turn out that a thorough investigation determines that the cops did everything by the book; and if one or both of them are eventually indicated a jury could — and most likely would — acquit them. That would be the legal aspect of the case.
However, there’s a moral dimension to the entire incident that can’t be overlooked — if this is how police officers are trained, if this is how they are suppose to respond to citizens … then there’s something very, very wrong in Cleveland, and indeed America.
And clearly something is wrong. We have a legal system that’s steeped in double standards: One set of rules for cops, and another set for everyone else. And cops know this, which is why they continue their morally corrupt behavior. They are consistently reassured that, virtually no matter what they do, they will be backed to the hilt by the broken criminal justice system.
Case in point: A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge recently upheld an arbitrator’s decision that the city should rehire a police sergeant fired after the deadly 137 shots case. Actually, the circumstances of the case matters little because no matter what the facts are, the cop was going to get reinstated. It happens all across America on a regular basis, and is one of the root causes of young black males dying from bullets fired from the guns of cops.
These constant exonerations emanate from the long cherished theory that cops do a tough job in this country, and should always be giving the benefit of the doubt by the legal system when charged with wrongdoing. The reality, however, is that some cops use this theory — in some cases — to get away with murder. This legal protection actually encourages them to be trigger-happy … especially when a person of color is involved.
The unstated rule of thumb in America is that whenever the person in a confrontation with police is white, every effort has to be taken by police to bring the incident to an end without a loss of life; but whenever the suspect black, all bets are off and cops feel free to fire at will. And as long as police nationwide observe this rule to preserve the lives of whites whenever possible, nothing is going to change.
But if cops begin slaughtering whites at the rate they kill blacks, the legal system would soon be in an uproar. However, this being America, cops know just how far they can go, and are not about to go any further. And we continue to tell the rest of the world how fair and just our system is … when everyone who’s the least bit fair-minded knows it’s a dirty and dangerous joke — that is, if you’re a young black male.
[Photo: The All-Nite Images (Flickr)]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.