#TamirRice: Cleveland Prosecutor Should Question the Cops
When I was 19 years old, I worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer as a copy boy. They sent me to the police department one evening to pick up a document. I’ll never forget the cop on the desk saying, “you look like the suspect.” Although I had the seeming security of being a student home for the summer from Stanford University, it was chilling. I knew that I was just a misidentification away from being another statistic about a young Black man caught in the criminal justice system.
As a native Clevelander, the Tamir Rice case, among the many news-making police killings nationwide, has hit home. I shouldn’t be surprised. In the 1960s, Cleveland’s first African American mayor, Carl Stokes, unsuccessfully fought to integrate the police department and curb police abuse of power against the Black community. During my coming of age, in the 1970s, problems with the police department persisted. To see that legacy continue, now with videotaped clarity, is painful and alarming.
Since my Cleveland days I’ve moved West, become an attorney, settled in California and dedicated my life to fighting for racial and economic justice. To witness the seeming legal sidestepping of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty in the Rice case is unsettling. The case has hallmarks of concluding in a travesty of justice.
The eyes of the nation have been on Chicago in recent weeks. The state attorney there withheld evidence from the public for more than a year before finally being forced to bring charges against the officer who killed 17- year-old Laquan McDonald. What’s happening in Cleveland in the case of Tamir Rice may be more pernicious. There is a steady drip, drip of questionable legal tactics and political maneuvers that may ultimately create a brew that tastes a lot like Chicago’s, and even Ferguson’s, injustice.
In Cleveland, County Prosecutor McGinty appears to be bending over backwards to protect and accommodate the police officer who fatally shot Tamir rather than doing his job of pursuing justice for the family of the 12-year-old killed last year. Oddly, McGinty has not publicly said what he will recommend to the grand jury. Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we simply don’t know how or if an adequate case is being brought. It’s been over a year, and charges have not been brought. When a prosecutor wants to pursue justice, it can happen quickly as we saw in Baltimore when prosecutor Marilyn Mosby moved swiftly and filed murder charges within three weeks against the police officers responsible for the death of Freddie Gray.
McGinty has distastefully characterized Rice’s family as having “their own economic motives” as they seek legal recourse. The family wasn’t informed when the grand jury convened. In a highly unorthodox move, McGinty released three “expert” reports favorable to the shooters’ account of the killing. What purpose did releasing the reports publicly serve other than to shape public opinion and pave the path for letting the shooters walk?
And most recently, McGinty has continued to prioritize the police over the victims with his shocking decision to allow the accused officers to read statements under oath to the grand jury — thus waiving their Fifth-Amendment privilege against cross examination under Supreme Court case law — without facing cross-examination. We should not allow a Chicago-like cover-up to happen in Cleveland. McGinty should call the cops back to the stand and subject them to cross-examination.
McGinty should do his job and question the cops in Cleveland who killed Tamir Rice. Justice demands no less.
Steve Phillips is a Cleveland native, civil rights attorney, and author of the forthcoming book Brown is the New White.
