Tamir Rice, alive and well
Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland Police 11 months ago. The case of his death has been passed around like a hot potato from office to office to office in Cleveland and local prosecutors claim they are still investigating it.
On October 10, Prosecutor Tim McGinty released results from investigators he hired to look at the case and offer their own "expert" opinion.
As it turns out, the prized investigator he hired, a former FBI agent, was actually cited by the Department of Justice for outrageous bias benefitting police on the issue of the use of force—the very thing at play in this case. In fact, Kimberly Crawford was seen as so biased that her testimony was flat-out rejected in a separate case being considered by the DOJ.
In a past case of police use of deadly force, Crawford's opinion was rejected by the Department of Justice for being outside the law, "overly protective of law enforcement" and going "too far to exonerate the use of force."
Local media made this discovery within hours of the "expert" reports being released to the media. In other words, it was widely known and easily discoverable that the expert hired by the prosecutors would come back with such a finding.
In fact, what's difficult is finding a case where Kimberly Crawford said a police officer was unreasonable in their use of force. I've searched for days now and can find no such thing.
This is tragic, and in my opinion, makes it clear that Prosecutor Tim McGinty should be pulled off of this case. On its face it's ridiculous for him to release these findings and prejudice local jurors, but the discovery of the bias of his experts is damning.
Again, we've reached the point where it is painfully obvious that local prosecutors are unable to adjudicate police violence fairly.
