Family of Tamir Rice Sues City of Cleveland and Police Officers Involved in Boy's Shooting Death

The family of the 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by Cleveland police on Nov. 22 at a city park, filed a wrongful death suit Friday against the city of Cleveland and the two police officers involved in the shooting, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court specifically names police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the police shooter and driver in the incident, respectively, as defendants.

The Tamir Rice shooting, and other recent national incidents where police have been accused of using unnecessary deadly force, have triggered rallies and protests across the country, including in downtown Cleveland on Friday.

The officers allegedly “acted unreasonably, recklessly and with deliberate indifference to the safety and rights” of 12-year-old Tamir Rice when they skidded their cruiser to a halt next to him, “confronted him in a surprise fashion and fired multiple shots at him without any adequate investigation, the Plain Dealer/Northeast Ohio Meida Group reported.

Echoing some of the concerns cited in a highly critical U.S. Department of Justice review of the Cleveland Police Department, released Thursday, the Rice family’s lawsuit maintains that police policies involving the use of deadly force led to Tamir Rice’s death, that the officers lacked proper training and supervision, and that Loehmann wasn’t a good hire due to his record at another Northeast Ohio police department.

According to Loehmann’s personnel file from the Independence Police Department, as quoted in the Northeast Ohio Media Group report, he “could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal.”

The Rice family’s suit was filed by attorney David Malik.

The officers drove their cruiser onto the grass at the Cudell Recreation Center the afternoon of Nov. 22 after being relayed a report that someone was waving a gun and pointing it at people near a picnic shelter at the park. The officers reportedly said they weren’t informed that the caller had stated that the gun probably was fake, or that the person waving the gun was a boy.

A surveillance video at the park shows Tamir Rice walking back and forth on a sidewalk at the park, waving a gun (later determined to be a plastic airsoft pellet gun), and then sitting at a picnic table under the shelter. The police car drives up to shelter, and the officer on the passenger side jumps out and immediately fires at the boy, who drops to the ground. He died early the next morning in a local hospital.

The image with this story is a screen-shot from the surveillance video showing the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on Nov. 22.