After repeatedly trying and failing to get his position back in Cleveland, Ohio, the cop who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice eight years ago managed to get another job, at least temporarily.
On Tuesday, Timothy Loehmann was hired as the only officer for Tioga, Pennsylvania, a rural town of 700 people four-and-a-half hours from where the former officer was fired in 2017. After a 90-day probation period, he would have become the chief. But after protests in both Tioga and Cleveland, Loehmann resigned, effective Thursday morning, from what would have been his second job in law enforcement since the 2014 shooting.
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Loehmann was one of three candidates for the job, according to Tioga Mayor David Wilcox, who also said he had no idea Loehmann was the same officer who shot Rice. The young Black boy had been playing with a pellet gun outside of a recreation center when someone called 911 reporting a juvenile with a pistol that was likely fake. Within seconds of his arrival on the scene, Loehmann fired his weapon twice, hitting Rice. The officer was never indicted.
“I was not allowed to take his resume or look into his background,” he told ABC affiliate Cleveland News 5.
Though the mayor did not immediately respond to requests for comment, he told the local TV station that he had no intention of letting Loehmann patrol the town’s streets after finding out about his involvement in Rice’s death.
The Rice family attorney, Subodh Chandra, released a statement applauding the resignation but not without slamming Tioga officials’ lack of vigilance over who exactly they’re hiring.
“While it’s all well and good that Loehmann will not be inflicting a reign of terror with a badge and a gun upon Tioga Borough residents and visitors, borough officials must be held accountable for their demonstrably, atrociously poor judgment and ineptitude,” Chandra said Thursday.
Although a grand jury decided that found Loehmann was justified in shooting Rice, he was ultimately fired for lying on his application and failing to disclose he was in the process of being fired from another police department for his inability to communicate clearly and manage stress. In 2018, Loehmann tried unsuccessfully to appeal his termination from the Cleveland Police Department, a fight which went all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court.
But this isn’t the first time he managed to get hired by another police department. In 2018, he was hired as a part-time officer for the Bellaire Police Department, a department located 150 miles south of Cleveland. Though Bellaire Chief Dick Flanagan argued the disgraced officer deserved a second chance since he wasn’t officially charged in the fatal shooting, Loehmann withdrew from the position following public pressure from Rice’s family and the Cleveland chapter of Black Lives Matter.
“This game of whack-a-mole with Loehmann shamelessly and repeatedly resurfacing as a cop elsewhere needs to end,” Chandra continued in a statement.
While Loehmann has managed to pop up on candidacy lists time and again, several states, including California, Virginia, and Massachusetts have taken steps to close this revolving door. These states have passed laws preventing bad cops who commit felonies, hate crimes, or use excessive force from earning their gun and badge elsewhere by decertifying them.
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