Comment The former Cleveland officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was hired as a lone cop in a small Pennsylvania town this week, nearly eight years after the boy’s killing helped spark national protests over the use of lethal force by authorities. law enforcement. Black people. Timothy Loehmann was sworn in Tuesday in Tioga, Pa., Borough President Steve Hazlett wrote on social media. The vote by the township council came after the officer’s name was released to the Williamsport Sun-Gazette and local media. A photo and caption from Hazlett on Facebook specified that the officer hired to represent the township of about 700 people was Loehmann, who was fired from the Cleveland Police Department in 2017 for lying on his job application, but did not face criminal charges related to Rice’s death. Rice was holding a pellet gun on a playground when he was shot and killed by Loehmann in November 2014. “Timothy Loehmann is your new Tioga police officer,” Hazlett wrote. The hiring has sparked protests and outrage in recent days, including Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, who told the Washington Post the decision was “a big mistake.” “He shouldn’t be a police officer anywhere in the United States,” she said, adding that she was outraged and concerned for the Tioga community. “I’m really shocked that anyone would give him a job knowing what he’s done to my family.” Subodh Chandra, the attorney for Rice’s family and estate, told The Post on Thursday that he was “shocked and yet not surprised.” “Timothy Loehmann has shown a level of shameless determination to rub his behavior in the faces of Tamir Rice’s family and the rest of the world,” Chandra said. “The level of poor judgment here by the Tioga Township Council is truly unfathomable and I hope they are held accountable.” Tioga Township Mayor David Wilcox said he was not told about Loehmann’s background when city council members found the officer and agreed to hire him. Wilcox told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he was not given an opportunity to review Loehmann’s resume and that the Rice case never came up at any point in the process. Details of the review process for Loehmann remain unclear. “I was under the impression that he had a thorough background check, that he didn’t have any problems,” Wilcox told the outlet. “I found it strange that someone moved here from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour. But I heard he wanted to get away from all that and come here to hunt and fish.’ Wilcox posted a video on Facebook Thursday from a recent city council meeting that shows a member saying he made a motion to “hire a police officer named Timothy — I still can’t pronounce that name.” He then wrote “Lochman,” saying the officer would be hired “provided he passes all physicals and everything accordingly,” according to the video. “Why were we NOT notified of the name change?” Wilcox wrote. Neither Hazlett nor a spokesman for the Tioga Police Department immediately responded to requests for comment early Thursday. The news was first reported by Garrett Carr, a freelance reporter for the Sun-Gazette. Loehmann’s hiring comes days after another fatal police shooting in Ohio left the state in turmoil. Police in Akron released body camera footage Sunday showing officers firing dozens of rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old black man who abandoned his car while leaving a traffic stop last week. Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett said he did not know the exact number of bullets fired at Walker, but said the medical examiner’s report indicated more than 60 wounds to Walker’s body. Eight officers involved in the shooting have been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of investigations by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Akron Police Office of Professional Standards and Accountability. Akron police released video of officers shooting Mavro dozens of times More than 1,040 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year, according to data tracked by The Post. Although half of those people were White, Black Americans are disproportionately shot. They make up less than 13 percent of the US population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of whites. Hispanics are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate. Loehmann’s hiring in Tioga — more than 300 miles east of Cleveland and just a few miles from upstate New York — is the latest example of a police officer being rehired after being fired elsewhere. A 2017 Post report found that although the nation’s largest police departments fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed public trust over a period of more than a decade, the departments were forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required from union contracts. On November 22, 2014, two Cleveland police officers — Loehmann and Frank Garmback — came to a park in response to a 911 call about a man with a gun. Rice was playing with a pellet gun that officials said was indistinguishable from a regular handgun. Although the caller told the dispatcher that person was possibly a child playing with a toy, that was not communicated to officers, who handled the call as an “active shooter” situation, authorities said. Within seconds of the police driving their patrol car onto the lawn, Loehmann, a white rookie officer, shot Rice from the passenger seat of the vehicle. Loehmann later told authorities that the 12-year-old black boy appeared to be pulling a gun from his waistband. After Ohio authorities investigated the case, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Loehmann in December 2015. Loehmann was ultimately fired from the department for failing to disclose on his job application that he had left his previous position in Independence, Ohio , due to “an inability to function emotionally” as an officer. Garmback has been suspended. The city of Cleveland agreed to pay Rice’s relatives $6 million as part of a civil settlement. The Justice Department announced in late 2020 that it had formally closed its federal investigation into the police shooting of Rice. Announcing the decision to close the case, the Justice Department said it had conducted an “extensive review of the facts in this tragic incident” but that career prosecutors in the department had concluded that “the evidence is insufficient to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Officer Loehmann willfully violated Tamir Rice’s constitutional rights.” The federal investigation also looked into whether the officer and his partner had obstructed justice and concluded there was nothing to pursue. Justice Department closes investigation into Tamir Rice’s murder Shortly after being fired in Cleveland, Loehmann was hired as a part-time police officer in Bellaire, Ohio. Loehmann withdrew his application a few days later after officials faced backlash over his hiring. Wilcox, the Tioga mayor, told WEWS in Cleveland that Loehmann was one of three candidates considered for the position. “It all came back clear that he had absolutely no bad remarks on his record,” he told the broadcaster. “That’s how he presented himself to the rest of the council and to me.” But when it became known that the officer who fatally shot Rice in 2014 was hired in Tioga, dozens of residents protested the decision Wednesday. One protester told the Sun-Gazette that the circumstances under which Loehmann was hired were “just wrong.” “I think a lot of misinformation was given and a lot of people didn’t know what they were getting into,” the man told the newspaper. Wilcox has vowed not to schedule hours for Loehmann until a resolution is reached, according to WEWS. Chandra told The Post that while he’s grateful residents and leaders are upset with the hiring, Loehmann’s reappearance hundreds of miles away in Pennsylvania has caused “a lot of pain for the Rice family again.” “It’s hard to imagine that the citizens of Tioga and the surrounding communities will tolerate a law enforcement officer who represents such a grave danger to them,” Chandra said. “So I hope the officials will do what is right.” Samaria Rice said she learned of Loehmann’s hiring days before she unveiled a memorial for her son at the site where he was shot. The officer who was getting a job in Pennsylvania, she said, was his way of “making fun of me and blatantly disrespecting me to my face.” “Timothy Loehmann just disrespects me everywhere,” she said, saying the past few years have “wearied” her. “There is no reconciliation there. As human beings and as a God-fearing woman, I should probably forgive him, but I will never forgive what he did to my family.” He added, “Timothy Loehmann is tied to Tamir Rice and that will never change.” Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
