Cleveland settles lawsuit over Tamir Rice shooting for $6M
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| FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2014, file photo, demonstrators block Public Square in Cleveland, during a protest over the police shooting of Tamir Rice. The city of Cleveland has reached a settlement Monday, April 25, 2016, in a lawsuit over the death of Rice, a black boy shot by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun. |
CLEVELAND
(AP) -- The city on Monday reached a $6 million settlement in a
lawsuit over the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy shot by a
white police officer while playing with a pellet gun outside a
recreation center.
An order filed in U.S.
District Court in Cleveland said the city will pay out $3 million this
year and $3 million the next. There was no admission of wrongdoing in
the settlement.
Family attorney Subodh Chandra
called the settlement historic but added: "The resolution is nothing to
celebrate because a 12-year-old child needlessly lost his life."
The
wrongful death suit filed by his family and estate against the city and
officers and dispatchers who were involved alleged police acted
recklessly when they confronted the boy on Nov. 22, 2014.
Video
of the encounter shows a cruiser skidding to a stop and rookie
patrolman Timothy Loehmann firing within two seconds of opening the car
door. Tamir wasn't given first aid until about four minutes later, when
an FBI agent trained as a paramedic arrived. The boy died the next day.
Tamir's
death has fueled the Black Lives Matter movement that firmly took root
in 2014 after Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in
New York City died at the hands of police. Grand juries declined to
indict officers in those two deaths and in the shooting of Tamir.
A
trial is pending for a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Brown's
family. Garner's family received a $5.9 million in a settlement with New
York City last year.
In the Rice family
lawsuit, Samaria Rice had alleged that police failed to immediately
provide first aid for her son and caused intentional infliction of
emotional distress in how they treated her and her daughter after the
shooting.
The officers had asked a judge to
dismiss the lawsuit. Loehmann's attorney has said he bears a heavy
burden and must live with what happened.
Tamir's
estate has been assigned $5.5 million of the settlement. A Cuyahoga
County probate judge will decide how the amount will be divided. Samaria
Rice, Tamir's mother, will receive $250,000. Claims against Tamir's
estate account for the remaining $250,000. Tamir's father, Leonard
Warner, was dismissed in February as a party to the lawsuit.
Chandra said the Rice family remains in mourning over Tamir's death.
"The state criminal justice process cheated them out of true justice," Chandra said.
A
somber Mayor Frank Jackson said at a news conference Monday that "there
is no price you can put on the life of a 12-year-old child." He said
the shooting "should not have happened" but didn't elaborate.
Jackson
said a use-of-force committee is examining the circumstances of the
shooting to determine if Loehmann and his training officer, Frank
Garmback, should be disciplined.
The officers
had responded to a 911 call in which a man drinking a beer and waiting
for a bus outside Cudell Recreation Center reported that a man was
waving a gun and pointing it at people. The man told the call taker that
the person holding the gun was likely a juvenile and the weapon
probably wasn't real, but the call taker never passed that information
to the dispatcher who gave Loehmann and Garmback the high-priority call.
Tamir
was carrying a plastic airsoft gun that shoots nonlethal plastic
pellets. He'd borrowed it that morning from a friend who warned him to
be careful because the gun looked real. It was missing its telltale
orange tip.
The settlement comes two years
after the city settled another lawsuit connected to the killings of two
unarmed black people in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire at the end
of a 2012 car chase. Cleveland settled a lawsuit brought by the families
of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams for $3 million.
The
fatal shootings of Russell and Williams were cited by the U.S. Justice
Department in an investigation into excessive use of force by Cleveland
police and helped lead to a court-monitored consent decree aimed at
reforming the department.
