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  • Timothy Loehmann, Officer Who Killed Tamir Rice, Fired by West Virginia Resort Community – Cleveland Scene

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    A week after the ACLU of West Virginia first reported that Timothy Loehmann, the former Cleveland police officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice, had this year been hired by both the Snowshoe Resort Community District and the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office, Loehmann has been fired from one of the gigs.

    Last week, the board of directors of the Snowshoe Resort Community District voted unamimously to dismiss Loehmann following public outcry memoralized in notes from a emergency meeting.

    As for the other job, though Loehmann had been listed on publicly available documents as a patrolman for Gilmer County, Sheriff Donald Belin has not returned messages seeking comment regarding his current employment status.

    Samaria Rice’s attorney, Subodh Chandra, said in a statement: “Every time Timothy Loehmann is misentrusted with a badge and a gun—and at least five communities have done so since Cleveland fired him for lying on his employment application—it makes Samaria Rice and her grieving family distraught.”

    “Ms. Rice is grateful for the outpouring of support and local community concern that led to this decision to fire Loehmann,” he added. “But it never should have been necessary in the first place. Ms. Rice awaits an accounting of how the hiring decision happened, who was responsible, and what is being done to hold the offenders—and not just Loehmann—accountable.

    Rice, for her part, said: “I still don’t understand how anyone can ever possibly hire Timothy Loehmann. I am happy that the community stood up once again, and I’m grateful for all of that support because I wouldn’t want another child to experience what Tamir and our family experienced. It’s a life-changing experience—and not for the better.”

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    Vince Grzegorek

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  • Timothy Loehmann, Police Officer Who Killed Tamir Rice, Joins Force in West Virginia – Cleveland Scene

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    Timothy Loehmann, the former Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice more than a decade ago, is now working for two departments in rural West Virginia, as first reported by Dragline.

    Earlier this year, Loehmann, 37, was hired by the Snowshoe Resort Community District and the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office as a patrolman, a roster sheet for the department shows.

    The hiring marks the latest stop in Loehmann’s often fruitless attempts to get another cop job since November 2014, when the then 22-year-old shot Rice at Cuddell Commons two seconds after hopping out of his cruiser.

    Fired from CPD for lying on his application, Loehmann tried his luck elsewhere— Akron, Euclid, Parma Heights, even the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, where he failed the written exam.

    He then looked outside Ohio. In October 2018, Loehmann held a part-time patrol job at the Village of Bellaire Police Department, then resigned days after news of his hiring surfaced. Similar episodes happened at the Tioga Borough Police Department in Tioga, Pennsylvania, and at the White Sulphur Springs Police Department in West Virginia, both places Loehmann left after public scrutiny.

    Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mom and head of the Tamir Rice Foundation, told the ACLU’s Dragline she believes Loehmann should never work in law enforcement again.

    “It goes back to a broken system and broken officers, corrupt officers being promoted to higher positions or being hired to protect and serve the community that they have failed over and over again,” Rice said. “These communities should be scared for their lives.”

    Subodh Chandra, Rice’s attorney, added: “Timothy Loehmann has no business being entrusted with a badge and a gun. And those who were imbecilic and heartless enough to hire him should be stripped of their jobs, just as has happened in other communities. The Rice family hopes people will rise up and protest, just as they did in other towns where Loehmann was entrusted with a weapon again. And anyone with decency and safety concern should boycott the Snowshoe Resort until it talks some sense into the District.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Officer involved in Tamir Rice shooting gets new job: I-Team

    Officer involved in Tamir Rice shooting gets new job: I-Team

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    ***Video above: Tamir Rice’s life honored with butterfly garden.***

    CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found a former Cleveland police officer notorious for the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice has gotten a new job out of state.

    Now, the lawyer representing Tamir’s mother has released a blistering statement.

    Timothy Loehmann is going to the White Sulphur Springs Police Department in West Virginia.

    The I-Team texted Loehmann to ask about the job but have not heard back. We also reached out to the White Sulphur Springs mayor and police chief to discuss the matter but they did not return calls or emails.

    Loehmann was fired from the Cleveland Division of Police in 2017 for lying on his police application, not for the deadly shooting. The city said he did not fully disclose his employment history.

    Rice was killed outside the Cudell Recreation Center on the city’s west side on Nov. 22, 2014.

    Police were called for a report of a man with a gun. Police said Officer Loehmann opened fire when he said the boy reached towards his waistband. The gun turned out to be an airsoft pistol.

    No criminal charges were filed against the rookie police officer or his partner.

    Attorney Subodh Chandra, who represents Tamir’s mother, released the following statement Friday evening:

    “White Sulphur Springs’s police chief and its public officials evidently don’t care that (1) the City of Independence, Ohio considered Timothy Loehmann mentally unfit for duty, (2) Cleveland fired him because he lied on his application (a firing affirmed on appeals), (3) he rushed upon and slew a child, and (4) in the ensuing investigation he lied about calling out warnings to Tamir when his fellow officer said the windows were up that fateful winter’s day.

    “While any normal person (and certainly any child) would grasp that Loehmann should never be entrusted with a badge and gun, some people love lying, child-killing cops so much that they are determined to foist him on the rest of us.

    “Every time Loehmann resurfaces in his game of bad-cop whack-a-mole, he torments the family of Tamir Rice. Why can’t he just go away and live the rest of his life—life he deprived Tamir of—in humility? Why does he insist on being a cop? It seems pathological at this point.

    “And what sort of crazy public officials don’t care that they must now disclose that he’s a known liar to defendants in every criminal case he’s involved in? Loehmann is a Brady/Giglio cop because of his lies on his police application and during the Tamir Rice investigation, and because Independence found him unfit. Timothy Loehmann should be radioactive to any sensible member of law enforcement community.

    “Officials who think its okay to hire him as a cop are betraying their citizens’ trust. As a former federal prosecutor, I’m disgusted by the lack of integrity.

    “Let’s hope White Sulphur Springs residents have the good sense to condemn the poor judgment of their morally bankrupt police chief.

    “It’s also deeply troubling that White Sulphur Springs police are retaliating against those (including journalists) who ask questions about Loehmann by quashing their First Amendment rights. But it tells us what we need to know about the indifference of public officials there to civil rights.

    “White Sulphur Spring officials should be sued over that and the city bankrupted.”

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    Peggy Gallek

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