By QASEEM KASSEM Dec. 30, 2015
CLEVELAND, OH – Police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the two officers who heroically shot local menace, 12 year-old Tamir E. Rice to death in November 2014, were not indicted by the grand jury this week, putting everyone’s mind comfortably at ease.
On November 22, 2014, Garmback and Loehmann responded to a 911 call that a black man was walking around a local park with a gun. The man in question, 12 year-old Tamir E. Rice, was thought to look much older than his age. Even though Ohio – the state where the shooting occurred – is an open-carry state, officers Garmback and Loehmann rightly-assumed that the black man was not a legal adult gun owner exercising his rights under state law but in fact, local child and feared career criminal, Tamir Rice.
Responding appropriately, the hero cops drove their police cruiser to within a few feet of Rice, screaming at him to put his hands in the air. When Rice tried to mercilessly gun down the two officers, Loehmann barely managed to out-draw Rice, shooting him twice before the vehicle had even stopped moving, ending Tamir Rice’s reign of terror.
Loehmann and Garmback – considered heroes by all – have been under unfair scrutiny for the past year, anticipating a malicious, politically-motivated indictment by the grand jury in the shooting.
Said Loehmann of the incident, last December, “There are people out there who might say that Garmback and I acted irresponsibly by failing to properly assess the situation before we acted. There are people out there who claim that Tamir Rice was just a kid playing with a toy gun, and we should have exercised restraint rather than immediately escalate into a shootout. There are people who have pointed out that a white man carrying a gun in an open-carry state wouldn’t have been shot by the cops. There are people out there who say that my past psychological evaluations and failure to demonstrate firearm proficiency should have disqualified me from having the job of an armed police officer. But that’s all irrelevant. If the grand jury wants to indict me, they can indict me. All I know is that Tamir Rice’s choke hold on this city is ended, and no matter what happens to me, I know that this one simple act of heroism saved many, many more lives than it cost.”
Loehmann, who had previously been unable to land a job as a police officer with at least three different departments due to consistently failing entrance exams, before finally being partnered with Garmback, was relieved this week – as was everyone else in America – when the grand jury did not hand down an indictment in the Rice shooting.
Speaking before the press, Chief of Police Calvin Williams said today, “We’re all relieved, all of us on the force, today. With Tamir Rice’s criminal enterprise all but a memory now, the grand jury’s decision has finally closed this dark chapter in the lives of hero cops Loehmann and Garmback.”
When questioned about the validity of the shooting, where it was demonstrated that Rice was not holding or aiming the weapon at the police, merely raising his shirt to show the officers the gun, Williams replied that Rice’s actions were clearly criminal, as any hero cop’s gut would have told them, “Rolling right up to within arm’s reach of a suspect in a police cruiser and screaming at them to put their hands in the air should have a calming effect, especially if the suspect is only a child… unless – of course – they have something to hide.”
“All of our investigations have come to the same conclusion: Tamir E. Rice acted completely out-of-line in this situation, and Loehmann and Garmback are nothing short of heroes,” continued Williams. “I mean, it’s possible that Rice was terrified and lifted his shirt to show the officers that the gun was just a toy but who can say? For all we know, it was a real gun that he was about to use to kill both of the officers who had rushed to confront him without fully-assessing the situation. Really, we’ll never know if that gun was real or not. It’s safer to assume that it was real, if you ask me.” Added Williams, “You know, I may not always approve of Loehmann and Garmback’s methods but damn it, they get results.”
When reached for comment, hero cop Timothy Loehmann discharged his weapon into the air multiple times and shouted, “Woo-hoo, motherfuckers!”
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