Cleveland Police Officer Who Fatally Shot Tamir Rice Is Fired

The police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice was sacked Tuesday for inaccuracies on his job application, while the officer who drove the patrol vehicle the day of the shooting was suspended for violating a tactical rule. "They were looking for a reason to fire him and this is all they could find".

Loehmann was not fired for killing Tamir, but for providing false information on his application to be a patrol officer, the police department said in a statement.

The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association said in a statement that the decisions to discipline Garmback and terminate Loehmann were "imposed merely to appease segments of this community who have demanded their heads". An evaluation in the file said Loehmann was emotionally immature and inept at handling guns.

Along with the suspension, Garmback will be required to attend additional tactical training.

But the Critical Incident Response Committee concluded that neither Garmback nor Loehmann violated any police policies during the shooting.

A subsequent criminal investigation by local prosecutors closed a year and a half ago, without bringing charges against the two officers.

"Given this ideal storm of human error, mistakes, and communications by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police".

Rice had been playing with what looked like a gun in a park near his home when someone called 911 to report him. McGrath also admonished Garmback for not waiting for another vehicle, as is standard practice on a gun call. The investigation deduced that the dispatcher had violated standard protocol in the way she handled the call.

A police union president says the firing of the white officer who fatally shot a 12-year-old black boy was "unjustified" and "politically motivated". Tamir Rice died the next day.

Timothy Loehmann was sacked Tuesday morning, two and a half years after he killed Tamir, on November 22, 2014. "Tamir Rice died early the next day".

Chief Williams said Tuesday that the department and the city had learned a lot from Rice's death.

The city settled a wrongful-death lawsuit previous year with the Rice family for $6 million.

"There's no accounting to the public for who it is that failed to check Loehmann's application, to check his background, to do proper due diligence before trusting this man with a badge and a gun", Subodh Chandra, a lawyer for the Rice family, said at a news conference after the announcement.

"You know, it's hard when a child - in this case, a 12-year-old - loses their life", he said. "It makes it even more challenging and more hard in terms of accepting it if it happens at the hands of a police officer".