After Cleveland officer Timothy Loehmann, shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death and then allegedly left him there for several minutes without seeking medical help, they handcuffed his 14-year-old sister and threatened to detain her, the siblings’ mother alleged during a press conference Monday. Samaria Rice said Monday that she found her daughter handcuffed in the back of a police car when she got to the playground where her son was shot dead for carrying a fake gun. The daughter then told her that officers had handcuffed her when she reacted to seeing her brother bleeding on the ground, and said they would put her in the back of the car if she didn’t calm down, according to BuzzFeed. Cleveland Police haven’t responded to an inquiry from the Cleveland Plain Dealer asking for confirmation of the new details. Rice had been at the park playing with a toy pistol, when someone called the police reporting a kid with a gun that even they conceded was likely fake. Within seconds of arriving, Loehmann reportedly fired his gun at the child. The shooting comes as a new Justice Department investigation finds rampant police brutality, including one incident in which a 300-pound officer sat on a 13 year-old boy who weighed half as much and punched the boy in the face repeatedly while the boy was handcuffed in the back of a police car. And employment records reveal that Loehmann was deemed “not mentally prepared to be doing firearm training” and lacking the maturity to be a police officer by his previous employer. In his application to become a Cleveland officer, he listed “under-the-table jobs” as prior employment. Their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, made a public request Monday that prosecutors bypass the grand jury indictment and file criminal charges against Loehmann.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:57:36 +0000
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