Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty is under fire after releasing two reports that justified the police shooting of a 12-year-old boy in broad daylight.
Before a grand jury decision was announced, McGinty released the reports late Saturday during a three-day weekend for most Americans. The reports, written by S. Lamar Sims, senior chief deputy district attorney for Denver, and Kimberly Crawford, a retired FBI agent and now criminal justice professor, concluded that the police officer’s actions leading to Rice’s death were “reasonable.” The reports also stated that officer Timothy Loehmann opened fire at Rice because he felt threatened.
In November 2014, Rice was killed after Cleveland police responded to an emergency call about someone brandishing a gun outside of a recreation center. In surveillance video, Rice is shot seconds after two officers drove their vehicle to within five feet of him. He was playing with a replica gun that shoots pellets and had the orange tip removed.
A grand jury will decide whether criminal charges are warranted in the shooting.
However, an old interview one of the report authors is casting the reports in an even more negative light for some. According to The Guardian, Sims did an interview with a local, government-run television station in Denver and said that police shootings may be ruled justified even when they appear to be the complete opposite to the public. During the interview, Sims said, “The community may react to facts learned later, for example, looking around the nation, say you have a 12- or 13-year-old boy, with a toy gun. We learn that later. The question is, what did the officer know at the time, what should a reasonable police officer have known at the time when he or she took the steps that led to the use of physical force or deadly physical force?”
Sims also said during the interview, which took place two months before he was asked to work on the report, that police shootings should only be judged by “what we knew at the time” and “not with 20/20 hindsight.”