Thursday, Dec 1, 2016 — 7pm
Indiana University NW, Savannah Hall, Berglund Auditorium
3400 Broadway, Gary
Two years ago today on November 22, 2014, twelve-year old Tamir Rice, in a park playing with an Airsoft replica gun, was brutally murdered in Cleveland, OH by two city police officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, who sped their patrol car to within ten feet of Tamir and, before the car had even come to a complete stop, was shot by Loehmann in less than two seconds. Tamir died the next day. Neither officer administered life support and it wasn’t until an FBI agent in the area arrived on the scene that Tamir was administered CPR, four minutes later. A 911 caller in the park told the police dispatcher repeatedly that the gun was probably fake and that Tamir was probably a juvenile, but this information was never relayed to officers. Loehmann had been deemed unfit for duty while a police recruit in nearby Independence, OH; yet, Cleveland PD hired him, claiming they did not review his personnel file.
Despite a June 11, 2015 finding by Ohio Municipal Court Judge Robert Aldine that Officer Loehmann should be charged with several crimes, to include murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, negligent homicide and dereliction of duty; and also finding probable cause to charge Officer Garmback with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, Ohio law precluded him from ordering the officers arrested.
On December 28th, 2015, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced that a grand jury decided not to indict the officers, saying, “Given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police.”
It has been two years without Tamir – two years too long – and still, no one has been held accountable for his murder.
Join courageous and grieving Mother of the Movement Samaria Rice at 7pm in IUN’s Bergland Auditorium as she talks about state-sanctioned violence and her journey to end it in memory of her 12-year-old son Tamir.
*Co-sponsored by the following IUN Departments and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Northwest Indiana: Office of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affiars, African American and African Diaspora Studies, Black Student Union, and Minority Studies
