Remembering Tamir Rice: Police shooting of 12-year-old playing with toy gun energized criminal justice reform efforts
Tamir Rice had recently traded a cellphone with another boy, exchanging it for a realistic-looking toy gun that fired plastic pellets.
Dressed warmly in a camouflage hat, gray coat with black sleeves and gray pants on a cold November day in Cleveland, Ohio, Tamir went alone to a park near his motherâs home, threw a snowball and of a Colt pistol.
Someone in the park saw Tamir, called and reported seeing âa guy in here with a pistolâ that was âprobably fakeâ and that the holder was âprobably a juvenile.â
But due to a series of miscommunications, tactical errors and institutional failures by Cleveland police, the responding officers did not get the message from dispatch that Tamir was likely a child or that what he was holding might be a toy. The officers did, however, get the message that the incident was a âCode 1,â indicating the police departmentâs highest level of urgency.
A police cruiser suddenly appeared in the park, sliding to a quick stop next to a gazebo where Tamir was standing. Seconds later, a rookie officer fatally shot the boy in the abdomen from point-blank range, describing the 12-year-old as a âBlack male, maybe 20, black revolver, black handgun by him.â
The officerâs quick draw, captured in a , called into question a police statement that an officer warned the boy three times to raise his hands before shots were fired.
Tamir Riceâs fatal shooting six years ago on November 22, 2014, drew international attention, highlighted the ways in which police see Black boys as more dangerous than they are, and made Tamir a prominent symbol of the over continued police killings and mistreatment of Black people and other communities of color.
Had he lived, Tamir would now be 18 â old enough to vote. His mother, Samaria Rice, has called for criminal justice reform and started a foundation in his honor to empower and protect Black youth.
âThe murders of Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun; Emmett Till, who was whistling; and , who was walking home after buying candy; all have one thing in common: They were Black boys engaged in harmless adolescent activities, but they were killed because someone thought they were older and more menacing than they were because of their race,â said Tafeni English, director of the Southern Poverty Law Centerâs Civil Rights Memorial Center,Ěýwhich includes interpretive exhibits about civil rights martyrs.
âThe long, grueling road of the anti-racist movement continues in the wake of the more recent killings of other Black people like ,Ěý,Ěý,Ěý,Ěý,Ěý,Ěý and so many others â showing us how much further we still have to go to achieve justice for everyone,â she said.
FBI police database
The shooting death of Tamir Rice and other police killings have prompted efforts to track officers with troubling backgrounds who leave one department and then go to another.
The officer who killed Tamir, for example, related to a girlfriend. A supervisor at another Ohio law enforcement agency where he previously worked said he was âdistracted and weepyâ at a shooting range and that he âwould not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisionsâ in stressful situations. He was allowed to resign from that department after six months.
In March 2014, the Cleveland Police Department hired the same officer without reviewing his personnel file from the previous department. After the officer shot Tamir in November of that year, the Cleveland Police Department fired him for lying on his job application. But in 2018, yet .
Spurred on by Tamirâs killing and others, the of police use of force. But the effectiveness of the database has been called into question because, among other issues, police departments around the country are not required to share their disciplinary data.
âCollecting use-of-force information is critical to reform efforts. However, the FBIâs database â in its current form and limitations â isnât very useful,â said Jonathan Barry-Blocker, a staff attorney with the ĂŰĚŇ´ŤĂ˝âs Criminal Justice Reform Practice Group.
Only nationwide supplied use-of-force information to the FBI in 2019.
The numbers are abysmal in Southern states.
Only , representing 2% of sworn officers in the state, provided use-of-force data to the FBI in 2020. agencies (8%Â of officers) participated. agencies (4% of officers) supplied the information.
âThat is insufficient participation for the database to be of practical use,â Barry-Blocker said. âAdditionally, itâs unclear how each reporting agency chooses to capture and report their use-of-force statistics. Therefore, the database is likely not representative of U.S. police agencies and their use-of-force behaviors. If the FBIâs database is to be a credible tool for substantive policing reform, then the federal government must compel police agencies to report use-of-force data.â
Other databases â including , The Guardianâs and The Washington Postâs â capture police use-of-force information better because they are more comprehensive, include more years of data and publish their information, Barry-Blocker said.
Some lawmakers are working to improve the federal governmentâs collection and sharing of such data.
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives named the George Floyd Policing Act of 2020 that would, among other measures, create a National Police Misconduct Registry. It would require state and local law enforcement agencies around the country to turn over data on police use of force that would be broken down by race, gender, disability, religion and age.
Additionally, the bill would combat racial profiling in policing, ban chokeholds and outlaw no-knock warrants in drug cases. It would also make it easier to pursue claims against police officers in civil court.
The Senate has not approved the bill.
$6 million settlement
Tamir Riceâs family sued the city of Cleveland for his killing and won a in 2016. But the city admitted no wrongdoing.
Tamirâs family still does not believe that justice has been served. In 2015, a grand jury in the case. Last year, as part of a civil rights investigation into the shooting, the U.S. Department of Justice rejected a bid by prosecutors to conduct , effectively ending the probe.
âWhile the settlement set a record for Cleveland police misconduct cases, no amount of money will ever bring a beloved child back,â said Subodh Chandra, the familyâs lawyer. âAnd prosecutors denied the Rice family a chance at equal criminal justice.â
The police officers got the benefit of the doubt in court, he said.
âAs the police union admitted, the officers were permitted to read self-serving, pre-written statements to the grand jury and take no cross-examination questions that would have disproved their excuses â special treatment afforded police officers that no other criminal suspects enjoy,â Chandra said.
âStill, the family hopes that their tragedy helped raise public awareness and spur the Black Lives Matter movement, so that we all see meaningful change and reform of both policing and prosecutorial practices in the coming years.â
Adding insult to injury, when Tamirâs 14-year-old sister ran to the scene minutes after the shooting, the officers â who are white â tackled and handcuffed her. When Tamirâs mother, Samaria Rice, arrived on the scene, distraught over seeing her sonâs body lying on the ground, the officers threatened to arrest her if she did not calm down. Recently, a police supervisor was for detaining Tamirâs sister for over an hour in the back of a police cruiser.
âWe have a racist government and power, and itâs not designed for us to get justice,â Samaria Rice said. âItâs not designed for Black and Brown people to get any type of justice under this government. Itâs not designed that way.â
In the aftermath of her sonâs killing, Samaria Rice strives to make life better for other Black children. In 2016, she founded the , which â among other activities â advocates for police reform by seeking âto change laws and implement new policies for the system with community oversight for police accountability and community reform dialogue,â according to the foundationâs website.
Shortly before this yearâs presidential election, the Tamir Rice Foundation the NAACP, Black Lives Matter activists and G-PAC to encourage Black people to vote. The foundation created a that included information for young people on how to register and mail in their ballots.
The organization also published The Tamir Rice Safety Handbook on its website, with instructions for youth about what to do if they are stopped by police. It implores them to âStay calmâ and âAsk if youâre free to leave,â and advises, âIf the officer puts their hands on you, donât resist.â
âWe want to nourish themâ
In 2018, Samaria Rice also purchased a building in Cleveland, naming it the . The building, now under renovation, will house after-school programs focused on tutoring, mentoring, arts, music and dancing for inner-city young people.
Rice wants to make the center into a safe space for children where they can learn about their African culture and heritage. She also wants to provide mentors who can help young people harness their power through civic engagement and activism, and teach them how to make change in the systems that oppress them.
âI created the Afrocentric Cultural Center in memory of my son to give back to the community and invest in the community, also in the inner-city children, because they donât have anything to do when school is over with,â she said.
â[Itâs] basically my way of giving back and developing a formula, and a formula to teach our Black and Brown children where they come from, that they are very much loved and needed, and we want to nourish them in a way that America has failed.â
Photo illustration by ĂŰĚŇ´ŤĂ˝