News / Human Rights

Cleveland police to review Tamir Rice shooting

Wednesday, 30 December 2015 4:44 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 30 December 2015 9:52 AM ]

Cleveland Chief of Police Calvin Williams (left) and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson speak to reporters at the City Hall on December 28, 2015. (AFP photo)

US police in Cleveland, Ohio are reviewing last year’s fatal shooting of an African American boy, a day after a grand jury decided not to indict the white officers behind the killing.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said on Tuesday an administrative committee, which includes civilians, will start the review from scratch, beginning with the initial calls to police.

He said the review will determine if the officers involved in the shooting would face disciplinary action.

On Monday, an Ohio state grand jury declined to indict officer Timothy Loehmann for shooting dead 12-year-old Tamir Rice just two seconds after arriving at the scene in Cleveland on November 22, 2014.

The shooting in Cleveland came just two days before a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict a white police officer in Ferguson who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.

Groups of protesters gathered Monday outside the Cuyahoga County Justice Center and at the recreation center where Rice was shot.

"People are very upset about it and I believe legitimately and rightfully so," Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said of Rice's shooting and other police-involved incidents around the United States.

Police killings, especially of African Americans, have sparked protests in cities across the US over the past two years.

According to data compiled by an activist group, US police have killed 1,152 people as of December 15 of this year, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans.

Forty percent of people killed by police in the country's 60 biggest police departments were black, while the African-American population in those jurisdictions was 20 percent, according to activists that run the Mapping Police Violence project.

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