Originally published in the January 2016 issue of Liberation Newspaper
The lack of a prosecution for the murder of Tamir Rice, purposefully announced between Christmas and New Year to discourage protests, exposes yet again the racist nature of the “justice” system in this country. It is made even worse coming so soon after the non-indictments for the murder of Sandra Bland.
For months Cuyahoga County District Attorney Timothy McGinty did his absolute best to avoid an indictment. His office repeatedly leaked inflammatory information to the media aimed at justifying the murder of Tamir.
That Officer Timothy Loehmann will face no charges at all—and neither will his partner—is a slap in the face. Under Ohio criminal code, any non-cop who shot and killed someone in such a manner would, at the very least, be on the hook for involuntary manslaughter, if not murder. The fact that the cop will simply walk free without even a trial can only tell us one thing: justice is not blind.
Not just ‘a few bad apples’
District Attorney McGinty is part of a thoroughly biased criminal “justice” system in Cleveland. It is the same background as that of so many other police murders: racist cops with legal impunity brutally policing a mostly poor, Black population.
While McGinty dragged his feet, the Justice Department concluded an investigation into the Cleveland Police Department, finding that the agency “engages in a pattern or practice of the use of excessive force in violation of the … United States Constitution.” The report detailed:
- The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons
- The unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including tasers, chemical spray and fists
- Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check
- The employment of poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable and places officers and civilians at unnecessary risk.
It also noted that officers’ use of force was “significantly out of proportion to the resistance encountered.” Justice Department investigators found “incidents of CDP officers firing their guns at people who do not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to officers or others and using guns in a careless and dangerous manner.”
And this is from the federal government! The reality of abuse and racism is so apparent that no one can deny it. Not unsurprisingly, the report also related that “many African Americans reported that they believe CDP officers are verbally and physically aggressive toward them because of their race.”
The role of the police in capitalist society
In a grand jury proceeding, the defense has no representation and deliberations are secret. It is almost impossible for a prosecutor to fail to secure an indictment from a grand jury—except when they do not want to.
In this case, a trial would likely have drawn out the sordid reality of the cops and the courts of Cleveland. Unlike the sterile Justice Department report, a trial would end up naming names, maybe even putting McGinty himself in the crosshairs for creating the climate of rampant police abuse.
Cities have spent massive sums of money to try to cover up their crimes through civil suit settlements. Chicago alone has spent half a billion dollars—an incredible amount—on lawsuits dealing with police terror in the past decade. Minneapolis has paid out $21 million since 2003 and Denver has paid $13 million going back a decade. Baltimore’s tally of $5.7 million since 2011 could have renovated 43 playgrounds, a local newspaper found.
But criminal cases are another matter. The prosecutors and judges—not to mention the corporate media—protect police officers from criminal prosecution so as to retain the cops’ right to freely use force on the population. Without that open threat of violence, they fear, it would be difficult to maintain their deeply unequal and oppressive society.
They function to hold the lid on the pressure cooker capitalism has created in the oppressed neighborhoods of the United States—wracked with poverty and despair, deprived of resources and strangled of hope.
The non-indictment of Officer Timothy Loehmann shows us that justice most certainly is not blind, and is simply a farce in the United States. Our response to this latest injustice must be to escalate the struggle that has already begun. As the Party for Socialism and Liberation said in the wake of the Baltimore Uprising: It is right to rebel!
