On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. Loehmann shot Tamir almost immediately after arriving on the scene and seeing him playing with a toy gun. Today is Tamir's birthday. He would’ve been 18. 
In America, 18 is the mark of adulthood. It's a turning point when one begins to grow out of childhood & into maturity. It's a birthday that one looks forward to. Tamir didn’t get to have this birthday, b/c a police officer saw his 12-year-old Black body & chose to kill him.
The interaction between Tamir Rice and the police officer lasted less than two seconds. Surveillance video showed that the patrol car was still in the process of stopping when Loehmann shot Tamir. There was no time given to assess the situation.
Tamir’s friend gave him the toy gun just before the police arrived. Two min. after he was shot, his 14 y/o sister ran to him. The police tackled her & put her in a patrol car. They threatened to arrest Tamir’s mother if she didn’t calm down after hearing about her son’s shooting.
The police waited four minutes after Tamir was shot before providing any first aid to him. Paramedics arrived three minutes after this.
When a 911 caller saw Tamir playing with a toy gun & decided to report it, she said twice that the gun was “probably fake.” The dispatcher asked for Tamir’s race three times. Implicit bias costs Black people, Black children, their lives.
Our habit of using the police to solve every problem or even answer every question is harmful. If someone had taken the time to speak to Tamir, like a human being, would he still be here today?
The officers were placed on administrative leave, and a month later the grand jury declined to indict them.
Loehmann, the officer who killed Tamir, had been on the Cleveland police force for less than a year. He worked for the Independence (Cleveland suburb) police department for five months prior.
After the shooting it was revealed that he resigned in Independence because he was deemed emotionally unstable & unfit for duty. Loehmann did not disclose this on his application to join the Cleveland police, and they never reviewed his previous personnel file before hiring him.
The officer who killed Tamir Rice was not fired when it happened, but he was fired in 2017 (four years later) after an investigation for withholding information on his application to Cleveland police force.
Retired FBI agent Kimberly Crawford found that Tamir Rice’s death was “justified” and Loehmann’s response was “a reasonable one.” There is nothing justified or reasonable about killing a 12-year-old boy within less than two seconds because you saw him playing with a toy gun.
There is nothing justified or reasonable about a police officer being allowed to work on the force after being deemed “emotionally unstable” and after experiencing a “dangerous loss of composure” during a weapons training exercise.
Defunding the police means suspending paid administrative leave for police officers who murder people. This puts more funding into the community since municipalities don’t have to pay for the harm that policing causes against community members.
Paid administrative leave presumes the right of police to use violence at all, which they shouldn’t have, especially not in the case of 12-year-old boys.
We know that police do not keep us safe, and Tamir Rice’s death (among countless others) proves this. Police don’t solve or prevent criminal activity. They often escalate situations and operate primarily to threaten and surveil Black and brown communities.
People who most need safety feel they can't call the police b/c they know this could threaten their lives. A 911 call ended Tamir Rice’s life. His sister was placed in handcuffs for running to his dying body. His mother was threatened with arrest just for expressing her pain.
This is why defunding the police is essential, and why reform is not enough. Spending more money on more policing does not automatically lead to less violent crime, but it does lead to a greater threat of police violence, especially toward Black folks.
Happy 18th Birthday to Tamir Rice, and may he Rest in Peace.
