The same police officer who was deemed “unfit for duty” after he shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014 has just been hired by another police department in the same state.
Timothy Loehmann, now the infamous former Cleveland cop, was picked up by the small village of Bellaire, Ohio.
Bellaire’s police chief Richard Flanagan admitted he hired Loehmann as a part-time officer for the town of approximately 4,000 residents, CBS News reports.
Loehmann was fired after he was deemed “unfit for duty” and fired for lying on his job application with the Cleveland Division of Police. Subodh Chandra, the attorney for Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice, said Rice ripped into Loehmann and the police department.
“She believes that Timothy Loehmann does not belong on any police force, anywhere, period,” Chandra told CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO. “Someone with his record should not be subjected upon the citizenry. But she does hope that this means that he will not ever return to Cleveland.”
Tamir Rice, as rolling out previously reported, was on a playground playing with a pellet gun outside of a Cleveland recreation center when Loehmann exited his patrol car and immediately opened fire on the boy.
Though Loehmann was terminated by the Cleveland Police Department, the Cuyahoga County grand jury refused to indict him for murder. Rice’s killing was part of a wave of very controversial killings of Black men at the hands of White police officers, including Michael Brown in suburban St. Louis and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.
