Nearly seven full years after the police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside the Cudell Recreation Center, the U.S. Department of Justice will meet with Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice. Rice will meet with DOJ officials Wednesday and urge them to re-open the federal case against Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for civil rights violations that led to Tamir’s death.
In advance of the meeting, Rice and supporters with Tamir’s Campaign for Justice rallied outside the White House Tuesday. They have been calling for President Joe Biden to re-open the case ever since former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, “quietly” dropped the case in 2020 without alerting Rice or her legal representation. Rice only found out, she said, when she was contacted by a reporter from the New York Times.
Rice said that Biden promised her justice for Tamir in an on-stage interview at the 2015 National Action Network Convention.
“President Biden, when I saw you in 2015 at a convention in Detroit, Michigan, you promised to make things right when you became the next president,” she said in a statement provided to the media. “We were on stage together and you shook my hand and said ‘We will make things right.’ I’m asking you to re-open Tamir’s case. His human and civil rights were violated in the most horrific way and for that, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback need to be convicted.”
Tuesday, she said that while Biden may not remember that conversation, she certainly does.
The marchers were joined by U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat from New York, who called for police accountability and a transformation of America’s “so-called criminal justice system.”
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This article appears in Oct 20 – Nov 2, 2021.
