Advertisement

Hundreds Demand Prosecutor In Tamir Rice Case Resign

More than 100 protestors marched to the home of Cleveland prosecutor Timothy McGinty and demanded his resignation CREDIT: SCREENSHOT VIA WOIO CLEVELAND 19
More than 100 protestors marched to the home of Cleveland prosecutor Timothy McGinty and demanded his resignation CREDIT: SCREENSHOT VIA WOIO CLEVELAND 19

Protests continued on Friday following a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict the two white police officers who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

More than 100 activists marched to the home of the prosecutor who handled Rice’s case, Timothy McGinty, on New Year’s Day and demanded his resignation. Chanting “New year, no more!” and “McGinty has got to go,” protesters called on the prosecutor be removed from his position and demanded a federal investigation into the shooting.

“Tamir’s spirit can’t rest until Timothy McGinty is out of office,” Rice’s cousin, LaTonya Goldsby, told the crowd. “That’s why we brought our demands to his house, to show how his work has harmed the Cleveland community.”

Advertisement

Protesters also staged a four-minute die-in on the sidewalk in front of McGinty’s house to symbolize the amount of time it took for Rice to receive medical attention after he was shot.

https://twitter.com/DaniCarlsonTV/status/682973188205211648

Rice was gunned down while he was playing with a toy gun, which had its orange safety tip removed, in a park near his house. A man who saw Rice playing in the park called 911 and reported that a man appeared to be pointing and waving a gun. Although the caller remarked that the gun may have been fake and that the person holding it was “probably a juvenile,” his observations were not passed along to the two the police officers who were later dispatched to the scene. Timothy Loehmann opened fire on the 12-year-old boy just seconds after pulling up next to him outside a recreation center in November 2014.

This is not the first time McGinty’s actions have been criticized. The prosecutor took nearly a year to bring the case to a grand jury and submitted a pair of “expert reports” in October that concluded that the shooting of Rice was “objectively reasonable.” The reports were prepared by two experts from outside the state: Kimberly Crawford, a retired FBI agent, and S. Lamar Sims, a Colorado-based prosecutor.

Advertisement

An attorney for Rice’s family called the reports a “charade” and blasted the prosecutor’s office for “releasing supposed ‘expert reports’ in an effort to absolve the officers involved in Tamir’s death of responsibility.”

Rice’s family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the two police officers involved in the shooting and the city of Cleveland.