[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; misogynoir.]
Tamir Rice was the 12-year-old black boy playing with a toy gun who was shot and killed by Cleveland police last year. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty has mishandled this case from Day One—and, really, "mishandled" isn't the right word, because that suggests he might merely be making mistakes due to incompetence, rather than orchestrating a deliberate campaign of bullshittery in defense of killer cops.
As you may recall, just last month, his office released two separate reports from outside investigators which asserted that Officer Tim Loehmann "acted reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun." As these reports were released ahead of the grand jury being seated to assess whether criminal charges should be brought against Loehmann, the objective was pretty clear: Dispose the jury pool toward Loehmann and against justice for Tamir Rice and his family.
Now, McGinty has accused the Rice family "of being 'economically motivated' in their pursuit to bring the officer responsible to trial."
"They waited until they didn't like the reports they received. They're very interesting people… let me just leave it at that… and they have their own economic motives," McGinty said during a community meeting Thursday, Cleveland's WKYC reported.McGinty accuses Samaria Rice of using the death of her son at the hands of police to get rich, trading on decades of racist narratives about "welfare queens" and black mothers who only care about their children insofar as they can "get rich" off of them. This is just despicable in the extreme.
McGinty's remarks Thursday were his first public comments on the grand jury process regarding Rice's death, raising questions about his objectivity in the case and its ongoing investigation.
...Rice family attorney, Subodh Chandra, denounced McGinty's comments on Friday, saying, "It's a shock and a surprise to Samaria Rice and her family that the prosecutor would go out of his way to insult her and her motives in trying to get justice as a grieving mother."
There is no way this guy is fit to oversee this investigation and possible trial. If you would like to sign a petition demanding a special prosecutor take over the case, Color of Change has one here, addressed to McGinty and point-blank stating: "For a number of reasons, the public has lost faith in your ability to ethically oversee this case."
Indeed.
