An Ohio grand jury decided not to indict the two police officers responsible for the murder of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black kid whose toy gun was mistaken for a real one.
The lead prosecutor, Timothy McGinty, agreed with the grand jury’s decision. “The actions of officers Garmback and Loehmann were not criminal”, he said.
He’s right.
In the United States of America, it’s not criminal to kill a black teen within two seconds of arrival.
In the United States of America, it’s not criminal to leave a kid dying for four minutes without administering first aid.
In the United States of America, it’s not criminal for police officers to lie. They claimed that Tamir Rice was sitting on a table with many others; that they asked him three times to drop the gun but he didn’t comply; that he reached into his waistband and pulled out the gun. None of these claims were true, but that didn’t matter to the prosecutor or to the grand jury. Because in the United States of America, it’s not criminal to lie about killing a person, if that person were black.
No, the officers didn’t break the law. Just like the slave owners didn’t break the law when they raped or killed their slaves… or the men who didn’t break the law in the past for beating up their wives. No one broke the law for lynching and burning to death Jesse Washington. They are all low-abiding citizens.
But when a 6 year old white kid was killed by police, the police officers clearly broke the law. Two officers were charged within 72 hours. But in the case of Laquan MacDonald, a black youth, it took more than 400 days and a judge order to release the video before any charges were laid.
Let’s just be objective here… The law is not broken. It’s doing exactly what it was meant to do.