Yet Another Reason to Get Rid of This System NOW, at the Soonest Possible Time!
Department of In-Justice Gives a Pass to Cops Who Murdered Tamir Rice!
by Carl Dix
| revcom.us
The Department of “Justice” (DOJ) decided not to bring any charges against the cops who murdered Tamir Rice in Cleveland on November 22, 2014. A years-long federal investigation ended with the DOJ deciding that “...the video of the shooting was of too poor a quality to conclusively establish what had happened.”
Tamir Rice was 12 years old. He was playing with a toy gun in Cleveland six years ago. 911 got a call about a Black male who was threatening people with a gun. The cops who responded to this call saw Tamir in a park and brought their car to a skidding stop right in front of him. One of them, Timothy Loehmann, jumped out and gunned Tamir down less than 2 seconds after they arrived! Less than 2 seconds!
I've seen the video, and it's clear enough to “conclusively establish” that those pigs barely had stopped their car before the killer cop jumped out and gunned Tamir down.
In a videotaped statement, Loehmann claimed he gave Tamir four verbal commands to drop the gun and show his hands and only fired after Tamir failed to comply. And he used the magic words murdering pigs always use when they kill someone: “I had to fire because I feared for my life and my partner's life.” Four verbal commands in less than 2 seconds? That was a goddamned lie, one that makes clear that the murdering pig didn't give Tamir any time to respond to any verbal commands he may have given. These cops got a report of a Black man with a gun (in an open carry state!), and they rolled up on Tamir alone in a gazebo in a city park and blew him away. Yet the DOJ decided this wasn't even worth putting before a jury!
Learning of this non-indictment was like getting punched in the gut. Think about it—here was a 12-year-old out playing as millions of kids do every day, whose life was suddenly snatched away by a cop in a split second. Just like 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr., who was murdered by a cop in Brooklyn as he played with a toy gun in 1994, or 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was murdered while she slept with her grandmother by a cop in Detroit in 2010, and so many other children.
Six years ago, this killer cop stole Tamir's life. Now, the DOJ decides to NOT bring charges, and the murdering pig gets to walk away scot-free. This kind of horrendous shit has been going on for too damn long, and it must be stopped, through making revolution, a real revolution, one in which millions of people are unleashed and led to overthrow this system and go on to build a totally different and far better system in its place. This kind of revolution is the only way to end once and for all the horror of police getting away with murdering Black people and all the other horrors this capitalist-imperialist system perpetrates on humanity.
The non-indictment of a murdering cop is completely in line with the stance of the Trump/Pence regime on policing. After all, this is a regime whose leader considers Black Lives Matter hate speech, has called for police to not be so nice with the people they arrest, and who has bragged “Trump loves cops and cops love Trump!” This regime's DOJ didn't bring a single indictment against a police officer for killing or brutalizing anyone in its four years.
At the same time, the refusal to indict this killer cop bears the stamp of the capitalist-imperialist system we live under. Law enforcement officers have killed hundreds of people every year for decades. Many of these victims of killer cops were unarmed and doing nothing wrong when their lives were stolen by those who are sworn to protect and serve. Killer cops are almost never punished for their crimes. While Trump's DOJ didn't indict a single cop in its four years, Obama's DOJ only indicted one cop in its eight years—Michael Slager, a white cop who shot Walter Scott in the back in South Carolina in April of 2015 and whose state trial ended in a mistrial.
The murder of Tamir Rice was no isolated incident. It is typical of the wanton murder and brutality that police perpetrate disproportionately against Black people. Together with mass incarceration, it forms the spearhead of a slow genocide targeting Black people. These horrors are unacceptable and must be stopped. As Bob Avakian said in the article “Racial Oppression Can Be Ended—But Not Under This System”: “It is not only right but crucially important to rise up and wage a determined fight against this, but it is also crucial to recognize that this racist oppression will never be, can never be eliminated under this system – and to finally put an end to it, we need a radically different system.” This radically different system is not only necessary – it's possible. It can be brought into being through revolution, the kind of real revolution I spoke of above.
Tamir Rice
I've known and worked with a number of parents who have lost loved ones at the hands of the police. I have a lot of respect for the way many of them have went through that tremendous loss and developed the strength to stand up and fight for justice. I especially remember Nicholas Heyward Sr., who passed away December 31, 2019, the father of Nicholas Heyward Jr.
I met him in 1996, 2 years after that cop had murdered his son. He was looking for people he could join with to fight for justice. He hated what this system has done to Black people, and he came to hate all the injustices it perpetrates on people. As I said in a statement in remembrance of him last year: “He (Nicholas Heyward Sr.) didn’t just want to know that the system was perpetrating injustices against the people, he wanted to know why and what could be done to stop it. He searched for answers to these questions, and he found a lot in Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the talks and writing he has done to bring to the masses of people the root cause of the problems the people face and why only an actual revolution could end all these horrors and bring about a radically different and better world.”
Many more people who want to see a better world, who want to see an end to police getting away with murdering Black people, to white supremacy and to all the other horrors people suffer under this system, need to follow Nicholas's example. People need to dig into the work Bob Avakian (BA) has done to figure out how to make revolution to get rid of this system and bring into being that different and better world. People need to follow this leader, BA, for the way out of this unnecessary madness and horror!
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