Hired Guns Arrive at Predetermined Conclusion

The prosecutors in Cayuga County hired a couple of "experts" to review the Tamir Rice shooting and they determined that Cleveland Police did the right thing when they shot a 12 year old to death.

This is hired gun expert witness bullsh%$ at its worst:

Two outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the 12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun.

Those opinions, reached separately by a Colorado prosecutor and a former F.B.I. supervisory special agent, were released Saturday night by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will ultimately present evidence in the case to a grand jury to decide on possible criminal charges.

“The question is not whether every officer would have reacted the same way,” Kimberly A. Crawford, the retired F.B.I. agent, wrote in her report, which noted that Officer Loehmann had no way of knowing Tamir’s gun was fake. “Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether a reasonable officer, confronting the exact same scenario under identical conditions could have concluded that deadly force was necessary.”

The reports, which were commissioned by the prosecutor’s office, come almost 11 months after the shooting outside a recreation center on Nov. 22, 2014. Footage of the shooting was captured on a surveillance camera, and Tamir’s name quickly became among the most prominent in a series of black men and boys whose deaths at the hands of the police were memorialized in Twitter hashtags and protest chants.

Both Ms. Crawford and S. Lamar Sims, the prosecutor from Colorado, said in their reports that they were evaluating Officer Loehmann’s actions under the United States Constitution, not Ohio state law.

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Mr. Sims wrote. But he added that “Officer 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.”

These so-called experts were hired by the prosecutor because they knew that they would say before they ever signed a contract:

A YouTube video of a prosecution expert who has sided with Cleveland police in the shooting death of Tamir Rice has emerged. The video shows him making pro-police comments about the case months ago.

Further, a second expert hired by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty to review the Rice shooting was once admonished by the U.S. Department of Justice for being "unfaithful" to the law in an effort to exonerate police in their use of deadly force.

The videotaped comments by S. Lamar Sims, a senior chief deputy district attorney in Denver, and the pro-police stance by expert Kimberly Crawford are raising questions of McGinty's motive in retaining their reports of the 12-year-old boy's shooting death last year.

McGinty released their respective reports late Saturday. Both experts hired by McGinty found the officer's shooting of Tamir, who was armed only with a pellet gun, to be justified.

………

In the YouTube video posted on May 8, Sims does not mention Tamir Rice by name. However, it is clear that he is speaking about the boy's shooting last year outside of the Cudell Recreation Center on Cleveland's west side.

………

Subodh Chandra, the Cleveland attorney representing the Rice family, said Sims' comments appear to favor police. Chandra said the comments make it appear that Sims was selected by McGinty for his pro-police stance.

"It's clear from the video that this so-called expert engaged by the prosecutor's office had already prejudged this matter long before he was engaged by the prosecutor," said Chandra. "It also raises questions in the Rice family's minds about whether that was precisely why that so-called expert was engaged."

Chandra said Crawford's past support of police also raises questions about her biases and whether those past opinions are the reason McGinty asked that she review the evidence connected to Tamir's shooting death.

In a past case of police use of deadly force, Crawford's opinion was rejected by the Department of Justice for being outside the law, "overly protective of law enforcement" and going "too far to exonerate the use of force."

What we have here is yet Another prosecutor who is trying to lose a case against a rogue cop who murdered a black kid.