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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