Some interesting information about Timothy Loehmann the cop who shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Rice is emerging.
Officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice judged unfit for duty by police in 2012 Timothy Loehmann criticized by small Ohio force for breaking down while handling live gun and his performance was called ‘dismal’, records show
A police officer who shot a 12-year-old dead in a Cleveland park late last month had been judged unfit for police service two years earlier by a small suburban force where he worked for six months, according to records released Wednesday.
Officer Timothy Loehmann, who killed Tamir Rice on 22 November, was specifically faulted for breaking down emotionally while handling a live gun. During a training episode at a firing range, Loehmann was reported to be “distracted and weepy” and incommunicative. “His handgun performance was dismal,” deputy chief Jim Polak of the Independence, Ohio, police department wrote in an internal memo.
The memo concludes with a recommendation that Loehmann be “released from the employment of the City of Independence.” Less than a week later, on 3 December 2012, Loehmann resigned.
In March of this year, Loehmann was hired by the Cleveland police department. It is unclear whether the department had seen the Independence memo at the time of Loehmann’s hiring.
“I have not received any instruction about it, and I have not received the file” from Independence, said Sgt Ali Pillow, a Cleveland police spokesman. He said the Cleveland department had not commented on whether it had seen the memo from Independence before Loehmann was hired.
A couple of days ago there was a story of an interview with Loehmann's father in which he attempted to paint a very different picture of his son and his actions.
Father of Cleveland cop who shot Tamir Rice says his son had no choice
Fred Loehmann said his son did not know the gun was fake or that Tamir was 12 years old. One of the officers radioed back to dispatchers describing Tamir as possibly 20 years old, recordings show.
"'I was right there and he went for the gun,'" he recalled his son saying. "'I had no choice.'"
Tim Loehmann wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, who spent two decades with the New York Police Department and another 20 years with the U.S. Marshals Service. The younger Loehmann began his policing career in Independence in 2012, but he soon grew tired of the slow pace of suburban policing, his father said.
He enrolled in the Cleveland police academy in 2013, and graduated in March 2014. He was assigned to the city's Fourth District, which has the highest number of homicides in the city.
"He loved the action," Loehmann said.
So the family story is that Tim Loehmann went to Cleveland looking for action, not because he was run out of town in Independence. Well he certainly found his action.
The local media is already on a campaign to build him up as a model citizen who is committed to protecting the community. This will be yet another police officer who was just doing his job and will get off without charges.