In responding Friday to a wrongful death lawsuit brought by lawyers for the Rice family, the city of Cleveland denied wholesale any culpability in Tamir’s death. 

The document is pretty much a paragraph-by-paragraph response to the family’s lawsuit, with the city claiming lack of information “sufficient” to form an opinion on all manner of allegations. But when it comes to the Nov. 22 shooting and Tamir’s actual death, the city is very clear.

Tamir died because he did not “exercise due care,” according to the city. The answer marches in lock step with declarations from police representatives and city leaders over the past three months. A litany of claims closes out the city’s legal response, asserting that no civil rights were violated when Officer Timothy Loehmann shot the boy.

In short: “[The Rice family’s] injuries, losses, and damages complained of, were directly and proximately caused by the acts of [Tamir Rice], not this Defendant.” (Page 38)

Read the full response below.

An investigation led by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office remains in progress.

Reponse to #TamirRice Wrongful Death Lawsuit

This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2015.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

8 replies on “City: Tamir Rice Caused His Own Death (Take 372)”

  1. The AP reported, “the boy has only holding a pellet gun,” yes a pellet gun that was modified to look exactly like a real gun! Who allowed this twelve year old to go outside with this modified gun or not to be properly parented and think that it was ok to point replica gun at a Police Officer? It is their fault and I mourn for the boy and feel sadness for the family and the officer!

  2. Actually the job of L.E. is to Protect and to Serve and the officer failed to ascertain if the child had a real weapon or a toy and the report to 911 established doubt that the child had a real gun, thus the duty of the officer was first to resolve this question, not take the law into his hands by executing the child.

  3. I have never in my life came across a police officer attempting to deescalate a situation. Their first response is to escalate violence-at any cost. It’s a cultural issue within all police departments.

  4. John did u even watch the video. The toy gun wasn’t even out he had it concealed. So how does one point a gun at someone when it’s in the waist of their pants? Also the person that called 911 said it could be a toy. Unfortunately the pigs were never told that. Apparently that must be tamir’s fault too. Is it tamir’s fault that even though the cops thought they were responding to someone with a gun they pulled up to him so they are 2 feet away from him? Why is that not brought up more?
    In the end the rest of us can learn that the Supreme Court has continously upheld that cops don’t have to protect u or try to prevent crimes. If a cop sees u getting raped he is not obligated to stop it. He is obligated to take a police report from the victim afterwards.

  5. So to be clear, what the city is saying is that when police drive up and hesitate 2 seconds before slaughtering a 12-year-old in a park with a toy gun — and when the cop who does it is found to have been declared patently unfit for police work by his previous employer, something the city claims not to have known — it is the dead 12-year-old who failed to “exercise due care.”

    Somehow we have come to a point in our nation’s history when our elected leaders can routinely say monstrous things without batting an eye, and the majority of people don’t bat an eye.

  6. If you suspect someone of having a gun you don’t pull up and charge at them suddenly. You pull the car to a safe distance and you get on your speakerphone and you tell the person to drop the gun and put their hands in the air.

    These cops literally went in guns blazing without taking a single second to assess the situation. They should be fired and prosecuted for manslaughter.

    And for those saying “how could the parents let their kid out of the house with a toy gun?” I can promise you that your kids are doing things that that they shouldn’t all the damn time without you ever knowing the difference. That’s what kids do.

  7. The video shows there was no try to even assess the situation since there’s no way that they knew the complaint was made because of that kid and not another. Those policemen went to that playground to kill someone. Even better, it’s all on video but somehow the dead child is at fault because he wasn’t prepared to get shot… I don’t live in the united states of America, but I don’t know of another place on Earth where somehow it’s a bad thing for children to play with toy pistols, swords and other weapons, or where children are killed no questions asked if they’re playing with this kind of toys. The stupidity of your people and especially your representatives just make my brain hurt more and more each time something that happens in your country gets in the news.

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