After being widely criticized for blaming Tamir Rice for his own death, Mayor Frank Jackson
offered a public apology on Monday for language the city used in its legal defense:
"Whether or not we can explain it away is irrelevant," Jackson said at a press conference late Monday afternoon. "I'm here to say to you and say to the people and say to the family that we're sorry."
The city plans to reissue the defense, removing language Jackson called "insensitive" and "hurtful" but still maintain its defense.
City lawyers have 21 days to submit an amended response to the lawsuit.Three of those defenses appear to point the finger at the 12-year-old for his own death.
While an apology in this instance may feel like it's better than nothing, the truth is that Mayor Jackson is just playing politics with this case. His admission, in essence, wasn't that the city was actually wrong for shooting and killing Tamir, but that they used the wrong adjectives in describing the case. The city still fully and completely aims to claim that Tamir caused his own death.
The tragedy in this is that the city has squandered an opportunity to just come out and say, "You know what, we made a mistake and we want to do everything we can to show this family and this community how we will get through this mistake together." That type of courage sounds too much like right.
The ugly truth is that the city and even the police chief started blaming Tamir for his own death the day after he was shot. In this press conference, the police brought out the toy gun they claimed Tamir had and showed how it didn't have a bright neon tip on it—suggesting that had it had such a tip, that he may still be alive.
The truth, though, is that police officers who pulled up on Tamir never saw the gun. He never pulled it out for them to see if a neon tip was missing or not. They saw that after they had already shot him and left him bleeding alone for minutes there in the park, but pretended after the fact that it had something to do with them shooting him.
Thanks, but no thanks.