By Mark Rhoads –
A grand jury declined on Monday to charge white Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, who fatally shot a 12-year black child Tamir Rice when he was holding a toy pellet gun in 2014. The decision concluded more than a year of investigation into a case that added to national outrage over white officers killing African-Americans.
Within minutes of the news bulletin from the Grand Jury, legal news commentators on MSNBC were speculating that the family of Tamir Rice could bring a wrongful death civil suit against the Cleveland Police Department because the 911 dispatcher did not pass on some speculation by the 911 caller that the gun might be fake. But the caller also said the gun might be real. In all respects, the gun looked real because the child had apparently removed the orange plastic muzzle clip that would indicate it was a toy gun.
The legal analysts said the civil suit could name all sorts of defendants, including Officer Loehman and his partner, the entire police department including the 911 dispatcher, and the toy gun manufacturer. Absent from such a list of possible culprits, of course, was the mother of the unsupervised child who was playing alone outside waving a gun around.
The death of the Tamir Rice is a horrible tragedy for a mother, of course. But when does a parent take responsibility for negligence in supervising a child playing alone in public with a toy gun? Is there any way that the police officer could have known that the gun was not real even if the 911 dispatcher had relayed the speculation that the gun MIGHT be fake? The child apparently wanted the gun to look real if he removed the orange plastic clip. An audio tape also shows the officer estimated the age of the boy to be 20 years old and not 12 years old.
Someone, probably a parent, purchased the toy gun for the boy. Yes, the mother is heartbroken of course, just as any mother of any race would naturally be over the death of her son. But at least some of the blame lies with the Rice family for lack of supervision of their son.
Officer Loehmann was not disciplined by the Cleveland Police Department beyond administrative leave because the department found that he had a "reasonable fear for his life" at the time of the 2014 shooting.
The manufacturer of the BB gun obviously wants the gun to look as real as possible because they realize kids want it to look real. If the entire gun was orange and not black, the selling point would be gone.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) recognizes an individual's right to own a firearm, but that does not guarantee the unlimited right of a toy manufacturer to make toys look like a real gun.
