Former Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann was fired from the force in 2017 for lying about his previous job history, but was not indicted for the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. As an unemployed officer, Loehmann was free to apply for jobs elsewhere, and will now “protect and serve” the small Ohio village of Bellaire, which has a population of around 4,170.
In case you’re forgotten, Loehmann was one of two officers who responded to a 911 call in November of 2014 about a “man waving a gun around.” When the officers arrived, both Loehmann and his partner claimed they repeatedly yelled at the boy to “show me your hands” before Loehmann opened fire.
Surveillance video showed Loehmann shooting Rice within two seconds of exiting his patrol vehicle. Loehmann fired his service weapon twice, killing the 12-year-old. Despite this evidence, Loehmann faced zero legal repercussions for the shooting.
Rice’s mother said she’s not in favor of this hiring: “Ms. Rice believes that Timothy Loehmann does not belong on any police force, anywhere, period,” Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra told The Huffington Post. “Someone with his record should not be subjected upon the citizenry. But she does hope that this means that he will not ever return to Cleveland.”
Bellaire Police Chief Richard “Dick” Flanagan sees this as a second chance for Loehmann, who was a trainee at the time of the shooting. “He was cleared of any and all wrongdoing,” Flanagan told The Intelligencer. “He was never charged. It’s over and done with.”
Lest we forget, before Loehmann joined the Cleveland Police after lying about his job history, he was an officer in Independence, Ohio, where he was forced to resign after being deemed unfit to be a police officer. He also failed a Maple Heights Police Department exam in 2009, something he also didn’t disclose to Cleveland’s police department.
This article appears in Oct 3-9, 2018.
Ever been to Bellaire, Ahia, Beej? Just across the river from the West Virginny panhandle, between Bridgeport and Shadyside. Same state, different world. Hell, a whole different country.
In Alabama, the Tuscaloosa. In the southern part of the Buckeye State, the standards are loosa. Bellaire ain’t no Mayberry and there ain’t no Andy Taylor or Barney Fife. That ain’t what they want, and they got what they were looking for…wink-nudge,
Ain’t gonna say no more. I think you know whatta mean…at least, I hope you do.
Yeah, and what about the mother in the ambulance saying “I’m going to get paid”. Doesn’t sound like a caring mother to me. Or what about a kid waving a gun around at pedestrians? What about the dispatcher that neglected to tell the officers that it was possibly a fake gun. The whole situation was SNAFU, but I can tell you, that mother only cared about getting paid. She didn’t care about her son walking around, unsupervised. Let’s not just forget that all were to blame in this incidence.
The parents obviously never sat the kid down and gave him “the talk” about the realities of life on the West Side of Cleveland, and cops, and guns, and toy guns, and acting like a young man (he was a BIG kid with a man-size body but a kid-size mind) instead of a punk and a wannabee.
Twelve is pretty old to be playing games with toy guns, but only a young fool tries to act out gangbanger fantasies by scaring passersby in a public place. He paid for that juvenile foolishness with his life, and his parents lost a son because they never told him what was what. Had his folks taught him the proper way to act when The Man rolls up…drop your fake gun and put your hands high, all this shit would never have happened.
A lot of cops were upset that day…I drove by the scene just minutes after it happened…the ambulance was still there, so you knew right away that someone was dead. And those officers on the scene had some pretty agitated looks on their faces, because they knew that the shit was gonna hit the fan,
But the shooter has withdrawn his Bellaire application, after taking a lot of heat, so maybe this will all go away again. Except the mother is pissed because activists are still selling twenty-buck shirts and she’s not geting any of that money. She said so right on camera…News Channel 5. Not gonna touch that one.