CLEVELAND (AP) — The partner of a Cleveland officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir (tuh-MEER’) Rice recalls pleading for a faster response from medics as the wounded boy’s condition worsened.
Cleveland.com (http://bit.ly/2oZdxvu ) reports the newly public recorded police interviews were done within days of the November 2014 death of Rice, who’d been playing with a pellet gun.
In one video, Officer Frank Garmback chokes up as he describes spotting the suspect with an apparent handgun before his partner fired. Garmback pauses, puts his hands over his face, then says quietly: “I didn’t know it was a kid.”
Their police union says the officers did nothing wrong.
A grand jury declined to indict them, but they face administrative charges not directly related to the shooting.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
"“This has to be the cruelest thing I’ve ever seen,” Akron-based attorney Walter Madison said.
The video confirmed earlier claims made by Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, and her legal team at a Dec. 8 press conference that an officer cuffed her daughter as she ran to check on her brother and that officers waited several minutes before administering first aid.
The girl, who was at the park with Tamir, ran to her brother’s side when she heard two gunshots fired by first-year Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann.
As the girl neared her brother, Loehmann’s partner, Frank Garmback confronted her and forced her to the ground. Loehmann rushed over, and the two knelt beside her as she rolled on the ground. Eventually the officers handcuffed the girl and placed her in the back of the police cruiser, less than 10 feet from her dying brother.
Officers then stood around Tamir as he lay wounded. One officer had his hands on his hips when a man, identified by police as an FBI agent who was in the neighborhood, entered the frame and administered first aid. It was the first medical care the boy received in the four minutes that followed the shooting.
Paramedics did not arrive until about eight minutes after the shooting. Much of what happened to Tamir after the shooting is blocked by Garmback and Loehmann’s squad car. The paramedics can be seen working as officers stand around the boy.
Tamir is whisked away on a stretcher a little over 13 minutes after the shooting.
Madison said the video depicted officers who showed “overwhelming indifference” to Tamir as he lay on the ground.
“No one thinks that it’s appropriate to try to save him,” Madison said. "The first person who does is not affiliated with the Cleveland police department.
“This is the level of service that makes people very upset and distrustful of law enforcement.”
Northeast Ohio Media Group reached out to officials with the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association. They were not immediately for comment Wednesday night."