Police Are Still Getting Away With Murder, and Prosecutors Are Helping Them Do It

In 2014, two police officers in Cleveland, Ohio, shot and killed a Black 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, while he was playing with a toy gun in a park.

As horrifying as that tragedy was, the news on Dec. 29 was even more gut-wrenching: After considering the evidence, the U.S. Justice Department decided not to pursue criminal charges against the officers.

This turn of events was all the more shocking because it occurred not long after the deaths of other unarmed Black people at the hands of cops, including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Those killings gave rise to an explosion of protests in cities throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world that went on for months, drawing attention to police brutality and racism.

One would expect such a powerful uprising would lead to a response from law enforcement and policymakers. But instead of moving toward reform, police departments in the U.S. have instead opted to hunker down, intimidate protestors, and fight any attempt at change. They have a powerful ally in this bid to avoid responsibility for their misdeeds: prosecutors.

The government often lets cops get away with murder. Even when prosecutors do make efforts to investigate these events (and many times, they do not), the end result is often sadly predictable. They somehow find there is not enough evidence to bring a case, or the police officers get off easily on a light charge, or a grand jury proceeding (which is closely managed by the prosecution) ends with no indictment.

In the Rice case, federal prosecutors with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio decided that there was not enough proof Rice’s constitutional rights were violated. They claimed the officers’ actions could not be proven to be “unreasonable under the circumstances,” according to a statement.

They said that “an officer is permitted to use deadly force when he reasonably believes that the suspect posed an imminent threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others.”

Tamir, a boy with a heart-melting smile, was playing with the toy gun in the afternoon on Nov. 22, 2014 in a park outside of a Cleveland recreation center. Officers came in response to a 911 caller, who reported someone potentially brandishing a gun in the park. However, the caller had noted that the individual was “probably a juvenile” and that the gun was “probably fake.”

This information apparently either didn’t get conveyed to the officers, or they didn’t listen to it. Within seconds of them arriving on the scene, the officers shot Tamir in the abdomen. He soon died on the pavement. It was unclear whether the boy had been warned to drop the “weapon” or raise his hands, as is standard procedure. Grainy surveillance footage of the event gives little indication of any verbal interaction. It appeared the cops shot first, and waited to ask questions later.

Disciplinary actions were taken against the officers, but not for killing Tamir. One was fired in 2017 because the department found he wasn’t truthful about his employment history. Another was suspended for 10 days for violating tactical rules about how he approached the site of the incident.

The situation has unfortunately played on in the aftermath of many other police shootings of unarmed Black people. Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was killed in March when plainclothes officers burst into her apartment in a “no-knock” raid. Believing they were victims of a home invasion, her boyfriend fired a gun, causing the officers to unleash a volley of deadly shots at the couple.

A grand jury investigation resulted in charges of wanton endangerment, a low-level felony, against one of the officers for firing rounds into an apartment near Taylor’s. No charges were brought against the officers who shot and killed Taylor.

A woman on the grand jury later told the media that the proceeding didn’t even include homicide or other serious charges against the officers. The investigation was incomplete and run by prosecutors who wanted to give the cops “a slap on the wrist and close it up.”

Grand juries are used in the federal system and many states as part of the procedure for bringing criminal charges. They are made up of ordinary citizens, just like juries in trials. However, instead of deciding guilt or innocence, they vote on whether there is enough evidence for prosecutors to proceed with a case.

The process, however, is run entirely by prosecutors — not judges or other impartial authorities. In practice, when prosecutors want an indictment, they get one, no matter the evidence at hand. A judge in New York once famously said: “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” Similarly, if the prosecutors don’t want someone indicted, the case can go away.

In New York, we all recall the case of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old Black man who was killed on Staten Island in 2014, as a result of a chokehold by white police officer Daniel Pantaleo. Garner, who was unarmed, was under arrest for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. The chokehold continued despite repeated pleas from Garner of “I can’t breathe,” which was captured on video by an onlooker.

A Staten Island grand jury deliberated less than a day before voting to end a probe into criminal charges against Pantaleo, who claimed he did not intend to choke Garner and did not think the man was in mortal danger. A federal civil rights probe into the incident was also dropped, leading to widespread outrage and dismay.

But sometimes public pressure does move the needle, ever so slightly, in the direction of justice.

George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed when Minneapolis police officers handcuffed him behind his back and pinned him to the ground over suspicion of him using a counterfeit bill. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, killing him. The encounter was captured on cell phone video, spurring massive and recurring protests in every major American city, as well as in roughly 60 countries around the world.

Perhaps bowing to the threat of continued seismic unrest, prosecutors did indict Chauvin on murder and manslaughter charges over the incident. Three other cops on the scene were charged with aiding and abetting. A trial is scheduled for March, although prosecutors have asked to delay it to June over concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and “the need to protect public health.”

It can be daunting how much effort it seems to take to hold officers accountable for killing unarmed people, especially when the prosecution seems so firmly on the cops’ side. But we must never stop fighting.