Community leaders seek arrests in Tamir Rice case by bypassing prosecutors

Community leaders asked a judge Tuesday to issue arrest warrants for two Cleveland policemen involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy killed while carrying a replica handgun.

The move, a signal of distrust in the community toward the authorities handling the case, represents an attempt to bypass the local prosecutor's office by using an obscure Ohio state law that allows private citizens who are aware of criminal activity to seek charges in court. It comes as prosecutors continue to mull charges in the case.

The two officers involved in the shooting are white while Tamir was black. The incident was one of a number of cases that brought fresh scrutiny to the issue of police use of force in the United States, particularly against minorities.

"Today, citizens are taking matters into their own hands utilizing the tools of democracy as an instrument of justice," Olivet Institutional Baptist Church pastor Jawanza Colvin said in a statement.

Those who presented citizens' affidavits (PDF) to a judge asserting "probable cause" in Rice's death include a professor and local clergy. It was not clear whether the tactic will work. Joe Frolik, the local prosecutor's spokesman, said Ohio's constitution requires all felony charges be brought by a grand jury. 

Cleveland law school professor Lewis Katz of the Case Western Reserve University Law School said that while he understands the frustration and impatience of Tamir's family and others, the court filing is more about making headlines than the pursuit of justice.

Charging the officers, he said, would be more symbolic than substantive.

"It would not be a meaningful victory," Katz told the Associated Press.

The head of Cleveland's largest police union issued a statement Tuesday condemning the group's effort to have the officers charged and arrested.

"It is very sad how miserable the lives of these self-appointed activists, civil rights leaders and clergy must be," wrote Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, adding: "Civilized society cannot permit the rule of law to be subverted by mob rule."

Cleveland's police department agreed last month on a plan to minimize racial bias and the use of excessive force after the U.S. Justice Department found a pattern of abuse against civilians by the local police. Rice was shot outside a city recreation center last Nov. 22 while he played with a Airsoft-type replica handgun.

Rookie police officer Timothy Loehmann fired at Rice twice within two seconds of arriving at the scene with his partner Frank Garmback in response to a 911 emergency call in which a bystander reporters what he believed to be a man with a gun outside the recreation center, according to authorities. 

The sixth-grader died the next day. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty has said the evidence in the shooting will be presented to a grand jury to decide on whether to bring charges against Loehmann and Garmback after a county sheriff's department completed its investigation last week.

Rice family lawyer Walter Madison said his clients were worried about the transfer of the case to the prosecutor in light of the acquittal of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo in May in another case.

Brelo, who is white, was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of a black man and a woman. 

Wire services