In a recent , Policy Director Gabriella Celeste explained that the shooting of Tamir Rice was not reasonable, no matter what 'legal experts' say. Celeste writes:
Last month, I proudly joined law enforcement in a standing ovation for members of Cleveland's police force as they received recognition for heroic acts in the face of serious danger.
I was struck by the restraint and responsibility shown by our officers as they headed into a volatile situation with an armed adult, , who, after being shot, did not fire back, but pleaded with the man to put his gun down, as did his fellow officers.
"We don't want to kill you -- drop the gun!" they shouted as the man kept screaming for the officers to kill him: "I want to die ... I don't want help ...."
Still, they begged him to drop the gun. "I know you shot me but I'm not going to shoot you," said Muniz. Despite the officers' restraint, the distraught man raised his gun again and the officers fired in response.
Contrast this to the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a shooting recently found "reasonable under the circumstances," according to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty's hired experts and . Crawford concluded that Officer Timothy Loehmann was "required to make a split-second decision." Sims determined that Loehmann's "belief that Rice posed a threat of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable, as was his response to that perceived threat."
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Ronald Adrine saw events differently, to criminally charge the officers.
Consider the "circumstances."
. "He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do."
Accepting that the officers did not know they were confronting an unarmed child, the video suggests they still did not actually see a gun - even a toy gun. Tamir could have been reaching for anything.
The cruiser barely came to a stop. After jumping a curb, driving between trees and a swing set and speeding onto the grass, the passenger door opened and Loehmann shot Tamir, before Officer Frank Garmback could even get out his door.
What about these circumstances "required" the officers to make a "split-second" decision to use lethal force? To assume the worst and then act on their assumptions?
Here the officers created a situation of "great peril" to Tamir -- and to others in the park. For "experts" to use these circumstances to justify the officers' response defies logic, essentially blaming the victim: Tamir "gave me no choice," said Loehmann.
Professional officers know they must assess situations before they take action. When they don't, they risk escalating danger and producing a perception of threat where lethal force is needed.
Professional officers responding to a dispatcher's description of "a black male sitting on a swing" by a recreation center would reasonably infer that the "male" was a young person. At least they would have been careful about driving recklessly and shooting weapons by an elementary school, in a space where children play.
If the shooting of a twelve-year-old in this circumstance was reasonable, it is hard to imagine when an officer's shooting would be unreasonable.
But there is nothing reasonable about a standard in which, and being on a playground is immaterial to the use of force. Age and place matter and should be the lens through which officers' actions are deemed reasonable.
Age matters even more in the context of race.
Research conducted by Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Jackson in 2014 found that both college students and police officers mistakenly overestimated, by 4 1/2 years on average for female college students, the age of black boys who were between the ages of 10 and 17. Noting the role of unconscious bias, they found that black boys were more likely to be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime. Goff and Jackson that "black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent."
Can we even imagine this from Tamir's eyes? What must he have been thinking when the police car came barreling toward him? Did he see the officers as his protectors or someone to fear? Was he even capable of thinking rationally in the "split second" before he was shot?
If it's reasonable to perceive a threat so extreme that deadly force is appropriate where there is no clear evidence that the individual being confronted even has a weapon, doesn't that essentially allow the shooting of people just for being "perceived" as dangerous.
The standard applied here is one that claims that age, race, and place are immaterial to officers' use of lethal force. In fact, the real, covert standard is that an officer's implicit fear of black children justifies failure to assess, communicate, and de-escalate situations. Worse, to shoot without thinking.
There is nothing reasonable about this standard.