It’s been two and a half years since Officers Loehmann and Garmback pulled a drive by on a 12-year-old boy playing with a plastic toy gun in a park in Ohio. How could they have done this? Why would they have committed such an unspeakably wicked act?
This week the tapes of the two officers interviews with investigators were made public and we get to see them try and justify the unjustifiable. We see them lie time and time again, we see them strategizing as to how to deal with the “suspect,” and we see that they were totally unprepared and or unwilling to even try deescalating tactics. There was a black man with a gun and he needed to be taken out.
"Officer Loehmann claims in the video that he was hanging out of his door shouting commands, with the gun out as the car approached Tamir, whereas he told the grand jury in a prewritten statement he read that he opened the door at the end," he said.
Loehmann also said he "presented" his gun and gave commands through a "closed" car window to the boy during the interview.
I have empathetic tear ducts; I see someone even wanting to cry and I’m off boo-hooing. I watched dry-eyed as Garmback broke down and felt only revulsion. I kept thinking, “He did nothing for that baby boy. Nothing!”
The two Cleveland police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was carrying a pellet gun, stood by without rendering medical aid as the boy lay wounded next to their patrol car, a newly released extended surveillance video shows.
Tamir was killed within 2 seconds of them arriving on the scene.
They knew he was black.
Cops did not render aid to little Tamir.
That weeping, inconsolable Garmback? He did NOTHING to help the dying boy. For four minutes he stood and watched a little boy bleeding to death and he did nothing to help and everything to prevent others from helping.
They didn’t “wrap” up Tamir’s 14-year-old sister; they tackled her to the ground and then handcuffed her as she screamed for her little brother.
Still describing the useless toy as a “weapon.”
Still describing the boy as a “suspect.”
While the FBI agent frantically worked to save the child’s life, the murderer sat in the police car holding his “injured” ankle. More concerned with his self-inflicted injury than the young boy he shot.
After watching the Razzie-worthy performances (or was it before watching?), the powers-that-be decided that the men acted in full accordance with the law. There’d be no accountability…not for the life that they took, anyways. Earlier this year it was announced that both men will face internal disciplinary charges: Loehmann for lying on his application and Garmback for driving too close to Tamir.
We call your name, Tamir. Rest in power, baby boy.
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About Support the Dream Defenders
(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1.We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Floridaand their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. TheDream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donatehere.
2.OurMichael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3.OurFreedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid.Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEARby refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
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