The Mind of Steve Loomis

Tone deaf? CPPA president Steve Loomis

Want a snapshot of just how little the culture of the Cleveland Police Department seems to have absorbed the larger societal implications of the unjustified killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice back in 2014?

The absurd comments made by Steve Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association are instructive.

In a CPPA press release issued yesterday after the city awarded Rice's family a $6 million settlement that absolves the officer who shot and killed Rice of any responsibility for his death, Loomis suggested the following:

"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms."

It might have been more helpful for Loomis to direct his apparent zeal for youths being exposed to firearms on the National Rifle Association and their efforts to weaken gun control laws in the state of Ohio and elsewhere around the nation.

No doubt the still-traumatized members of Tamir Rice's family appreciate Loomis' advice on how to spend the money awarded as a direct result of the incompetence and flagrantly unprofessional actions of the two members of the CPD who took their child's life.

Lest we forget, Rice was playing with a toy gun in a park.

Timothy Loehmann

After officer Frank Garmback pulled the patrol car up to less than 20 feet from where Rice was standing, officer Timothy Loehmann jumped out and shot and killed Rice within 35 seconds of pulling up to the scene; (if Loomis has helpful suggestions on how CPD cops might prevent the "mishandling" of such situations in the future no doubt they'd be welcome).

Loomis' snide press release failed to mention that Loehmann was ripped apart as incompetent and unfit to serve as an Independence (Ohio) police officer in a training evaluation written November 29, 2012.

An eerily prophetic evaluation, written almost exactly two years to the day before Loehamnn shot and killed Tamir Rice, by Independence PD deputy police chief Jim Polak, who wrote of Loehmann's conduct and performance during live fire training:

"Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl. Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment....I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies." 

The Cleveland Police Department hired him anyway, and that's the guy who ended up jumping out of a police car to confront a 12-year-old with a toy gun in the middle of a public park in broad daylight.

The deplorable efforts by Loomis to suggest Rice was responsible for his own death aside, the Cleveland PD had been under federal investigation for the habitual use of excessive force for well over a year by the time Rice was shot in 2014 - including the punching of a 13-year-old who was in handcuffs for shoplifting.

Rice family attorney Jonathan Abady

On a segment of The Brian Lehrer Show earlier this morning, the Rice family's lead attorney, Jonathan Abady (pictured left) sat down with Brian for a really insightful and eloquent summary of the larger implications of the settlement with the city of Cleveland.

If you're interested in a really sharp legal observation on the prosecution of police officers for the flagrant misuse of deadly force, click the link above and give the segment a listen - it runs about 20 minutes.

Abady spoke with conviction and restrained passion about what the settlement awarded to Tamir Rice's family means for the outrageous frequency of unjustified uses of deadly police force against unarmed black and Hispanic suspects in this country.

Abady observed that ultimately, the dollar amount of the settlement means very little to Tamir Rice's family compared to the loss of their child's life before his thirteenth birthday.

He echoed the need for courts and prosecutors around the nation to begin to hold officers like Timothy Loehmann legally accountable for their actions.

$140 million for Hulk's privacy?

One of the most interesting observations during the segment came when host Brian Lehrer, who rarely spoke during Abady's comments, took a call from a listener who observed that former wrestling star Hulk Hogan was recently awarded $114 million in damages by a jury for the invasion of privacy he suffered when Gawker.com posted a sex tape that showed him doing the deed - the same jury also awarded him an additional $25 million in punitive damages for a total of $140 million.

As the caller noted, that amount will likely be reduced on appeal.

But it says something about the American legal system that a guy who's famous for being a fake wrestler is awarded $140 million for a tape of him having sex getting posted online - but the family of a 12 year-old African-American boy who was shot killed by police is awarded $6 million.

It begs the question, do black lives matter?

The remarkably insensitive press release comments of the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association Steve Loomis offer insight into what some members of the Cleveland PD think about that - as does the fact that Tamir Rice is dead and the officer responsible for killing him won't face legal responsibility for it in a court of law.

But perhaps more importantly, the mind of Steve Loomis offers us valuable insight into how the subconscious thoughts inside the heads of some members of the law enforcement community can influence the split-second decision to serve and protect, or simply pull the trigger when circumstances clearly don't warrant such an irreversible choice.

In that sense, the mind of Steve Loomis is instructive.

Sadly misinformed and clearly biased, but instructive.

No Charges in a Child's Death

Is anyone responsible for Tamir Rice's death?

The announcement earlier today by Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty that the members of a Cleveland grand jury have declined to indict Cleveland police officer Tim Loehmann for the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice has left many people saddened, but few surprised.

With the news breaking this afternoon, the media will be devoting plenty of time and analysis as to the performance of the prosecutor's office in seeking justice for a child who couldn't testify on his own behalf.

I'll leave it to more learned men and women than I to determine what measure of responsibility CPD officer Loehmann bears for pulling the trigger of his gun less than six seconds after pulling up to the park pavilion in Cleveland where Rice was shot on a snowy day in Cleveland back on November 23, 2014.  

As a New York Times article about the grand jury decision reported earlier today, Cleveland Police chief Calvin Williams insists that the pending results of an as-yet incomplete "administrative review" of the actions of the officer Loehamann and the driver of the cruiser officer Frank Garmback in the incident will determine if any member of the CPD will face charges of any kind for Rice's death.

According to the Times article Chief Williams promised that "We'll look at the incident from start to finish."

But frankly the Cleveland Police Department and the city have had more than a year to conduct internal investigations of its officer's professional conduct with regards to this case, my guess is that if departmental charges were going to be filed they would have already.  

If you were to walk out on the street of any city in America and ask a random person what kind of faith people would place in a police department's own "administrative review" my guess would be very little; if any at all.

It's not possible to get into the minds of the grand jury in this case, and they've obviously made their decision.

Timothy Loehmann

But one thing that I would be curious to know how is just much time the grand jury (who found no grounds for charges) spent reviewing the fact that Timothy Loehmann had been forced to resign from his previous position with the suburban Independence Police Department because of what his former chief Jim Polak called serious "deficiencies" in a report on November 29, 2012 in which he described Loehmann's handgun performance as "dismal".

The deficiencies in performance which Polak reported included "dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress."

It's probably fair to say Loehmann's loss of composure issues were still a serious issue when he shot Tamir Rice two years after that report from the Independence PD was written.

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Chief Williams' administrative review to cover Loehmann's composure issues.

If this investigation has shown anything, it's that the city of Cleveland and the prosecutor Timothy McGinty are pretty much resigned to doing whatever they can to prove the remarkable legal determination that no one who was actually involved in the shooting of Tamir Rice bears any responsibility for his death.

In the meantime, officers Loehmann and Garmback will remain on "restricted duty" until the completion of the CPD's aforementioned "administrative review".

I hate to be such a cynic about this case, but restricted duty is about as much punishment as Timothy Loehmann is probably going to face for taking the life of a 12-year-old child.

That's just a sad commentary on the state of 21st century policing in America no matter how you look at it.
    

Objectively Reasonable?

Buster the cat ponders the Democratic debate

It was my plan earlier this evening to head over to watch the Democratic presidential debate with some liberal minded friends but after getting caught out in the thunderous downpour that hit parts of central New Jersey around 7pm, I changed my mind.

Since the post-debate media coverage of the debate will be exhaustive, I decided to sit in front of my lap top and get some work done while following The New York Times live play-by-play of the debate on my Kindle with my trusty cat Buster.

Like me, Buster (pictured left) is still wondering if Senator Bernie Sanders can appeal to a wider mainstream American electorate.

Before I get back to scanning the post-debate analysis online, I just wanted to share a few observations on the results of the Tamir Rice investigation summary findings that were released late Saturday night. 

Like millions of other people who've followed this tragic case of injustice since 12-year old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland Police officer Timothy Loehmann just before Thanksgiving back on November 21, 2014, I'm starting to get an uncomfortably familiar feeling about the course this investigation is taking.

As you've likely heard by now, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office released the controversial results of two separate investigations by use-of-force experts S. Lamar Sims and Kimberly Crawford which suggest that Loehmann's shooting of Rice was "objectively reasonable".

Prosecutor? Or cop defender? Timothy McGinty

Members of Rice's family, activists, protesters and people around the globe who've followed this case with interest since last year are expressing widespread concern that the leaked investigation results are an indicator that Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty (pictured left) is using the same kind of sleazy back-door tactics used in the prosecution of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of 18-year old Michael Brown.

Thanks to the efforts (or appalling lack thereof) of prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch, a man with deep ties to the Ferguson PD whose father was killed in the line of duty when McCulloch was 12-years old, the St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Wilson on any charges whatsoever in the death of Michael Brown.

The decision of the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office to release these findings suggests they are following the same strategy as McCulloch did; they're essentially planning to exonerate Timothy Loehmann of any wrong doing in the death of an innocent child.

Now I don't think anyone would suggest that the Cleveland Police Department didn't have good reason to be cautious after responding to a 911 call about someone in Cudell Park pointing a gun at people.

But the caller told the police dispatcher TWICE that he thought the gun "was probably fake" and that the person pointing it was likely a juvenile. Even though the CPD claims the dispatcher never relayed that info to the two officers who responded to the scene, does that still make Loehmann's decision to shoot Rice "objectively reasonable"?

According to a detailed breakdown of the incident on Wikipedia:

"A surveillance video without audio of the shooting was released by police on November 26 after pressure from the public and the child's family. It showed Rice pacing around the park, occasionally extending his right arm with what could be a gun in his hand, talking on a cellphone, and sitting at a picnic table in a gazebo. The video shows a patrol car driving at a high rate of speed across the park lawn and then stopping abruptly by the gazebo. Loehmann then jumps out of the car and immediately shoots Rice from a distance of less than 10 feet (3.0 m). According to Judge Ronald B. Adrine in a judgment entry on the case "this court is still thunderstruck by how quickly this event turned deadly.... On the video the zone car containing Patrol Officers Loehmann and Garmback is still in the process of stopping when Rice is shot." 

Are those actions "objectively reasonable"? Doesn't sound like the judge thought they were.

Personally, I thought The Field Negro was spot on in his blog post last Sunday when he contrasted the reactions by police in San Diego to a report of a man waving a gun in a public area, to the actions taken by Cleveland police officers Loehmann and Garmback (who was driving).

As TFN observed, when San Diego PD responded to a disturbed man waving a gun in a public place, they spent over an hour negotiating with him to try and get him to lay down his weapon, until one (or more) of the officers were forced to shoot and wound him.

Loehmann essentially pulled out his gun and shot Rice at point blank range even while the car was still moving.

Now I am not a use-of-force expert, so I can't debate the conclusions of S. Lamar Sims and Kimberly Crawford; two individuals who have far more knowledge of law enforcement training and tactics than I do.

But I'm not the only one who finds it odd that their investigation of the Rice shooting finds that Loehamann's actions were "objectively reasonable" even though his past record as a police officer not only showed him to be incompetent, but a former supervisor noted that he displayed "dismal handgun performance."

It's late and I have to be up early, but if you want to read over some more details about just what kind of cop Timothy Loehmann was, check out my blog post from December 4, 2014 - before he joined the CPD, this guy had literally been fired from the Cleveland Independent Police Department because he was incompetent. 

As MSNBC reported back in 2014, Loehhmann's former Deputy Chief of the Independence PD Jim Polak wrote of Loehmann:

“Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl. Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak wrote on Nov. 29. “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies.”  

Loehmann resigned five days after that report was written and Polak's observation proved to be uncannily accurate.

Timothy Loehmann

Loehmann (pictured left) showed poor judgment when he was with the Independence PD as he did when he pulled up to the pavilion area and shot a kid at point blank range.

Did the Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty and S. Lamar Sims and Kimberly Crawford (the two use-of-force experts he hired to investigate the case) simply decide Loehmann's dismal record as a police officer prior to joining the CPD was not relevant?

How in good conscience could the prosecutor read that evaluation of Timothy Loehamann's performance as an officer and still agree that his decision to take out his weapon and kill a 12-year old with a plastic toy gun on November 21, 2014 was "objectively reasonable"?

Sadly, it sounds like Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty is acting in the interests of the city of Cleveland to prevent Rice's family from suing the city for millions as he also acts to protect a totally incompetent police officer from being held responsible for his actions.

The anniversary of the case is coming up in November, so we're sure to see more extensive media coverage of how the case plays out.

But for now, prosecutor Timothy McGinty is giving every indication that the city of Cleveland is planning to reinforce an unwritten rule that, regardless of the circumstances, using deadly force on someone with dark skin in this country is "objectively reasonable" for members of U.S. law enforcement.

Every. Single. Time.

A Very Disgruntled Crew

New York PBA President Patrick Lynch

Clearly many members of law enforcement in America are just not feeling the love these days.

Just ask Patrick Lynch (pictured left), the perpetually disgruntled and opinionated President of the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, whose highly public divisive tirades against Mayor Bill DeBlasio have begun to rankle members of the NYPD, who believe his partisan petty feuds with everyone from the mayor to local activists reflect a tendency to place his own interests ahead of a membership that is growing tired of his confrontation-driven autocratic leadership style.

In all fairness to the many dedicated police officers in communities around the nation who take their oath to protect and serve seriously (and sometimes risk their lives to do so) we as a society too often place them in impossible situations that are not always "law enforcement issues"; thrusting them into the difficult position of having to balance the role of sociologist, psychologist, babysitter, mediator, savior, protector or soldier. 

In light of the many high-profile cases of excessive use of force or unjustified killings by police spotlighted in mainstream and social media, it begs the question: do we ask too much of police?

Are the politicians and government officials responsible for appropriating funds and approving budgets placing too much of the burden to solve society's problems on police forces?

The palpable deterioration of race relations, civil rights and voting rights, coupled with the growing income gap, stagnant wages for the 99% and chronic under-employment / unemployment that has negatively impacted the US since 1980 (and worsened since the Republican party allowed itself to be hijacked by maniacally partisan extremist ideologues in the early 1990's) are issues that are far too complex to be simply laid at the feet of police.

But far too often, the socioeconomic byproducts of these issues, like poverty, shrinking social services, under-serving public schools and a dysfunctional justice system, end up on the plates of local law enforcement when something (or someone) finally gives; and someone dials 911.

In some cases, the all-too human police officer(s) responding to emergencies don't have the time, patience, experience, training, or emotional control to deescalate a tense situation; or determine whether someone is a danger to themselves, the public, or the officer.

If you read this blog you know I'm one of those citizens who holds police officers to a much higher standard, but in all honesty if we pull up to a curb at night and there's a crazy-looking shirtless guy holding a knife who's yelling to himself; how do you know he's schizophrenic and off his meds, or on a three-day meth bender?

In all fairness to police officers, it is really a cop's responsibility because someone is off his meds and not getting adequate treatment for mental illness? Is it a cop's responsibility that someone has a meth addiction? Where does society's responsibility lie in this age of shrinking social services and Republican politicians in Washington who rail against unions (including police unions) and "Big Government"?

12 year-old Tamir Rice, shot dead in a park last November

Let's imagine the perfect world for a minute.

In that scenario maybe the city of Cleveland has more tax revenue coming in from a workforce that's more gainfully employed, earning wages that are actually pegged to the cost of living, resulting in sufficient municipal funding for an adequate number of properly staffed rec enters and adult-supervised after-school programs for children so 12 year-old Tamir Rice might've had a different option than pacing aimlessly around the park area outside of the Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland on a cold snowy day on November, 22, 2014 playing with a plastic toy gun.

In that perfect world a poorly-trained 26 year-old Cleveland police officer like Timothy Loehmann with a sketchy record who'd already been dismissed from a municipal police force for being incompetent (and hadn't been properly vetted by CPD's underfunded human resource department) doesn't have cause to drive up and shoot 12 year-old Rice in the torso for doing what 12 year-old American boys have been doing since the 19th century; hanging around outside playing with a fake gun - because maybe Rice would instead be inside a well-funded community recreation center under the supervision of an adult teaching him something productive. 

In a perfect world maybe the economy in Staten Island is better and Eric Garner has a decent job that pays him a living wage so that he doesn't have to wander around the streets selling "loosie" cigarettes for a buck apiece to help support his family; so a group of NYPD cops charged with enforcing a "broken windows" policy don't have to roll up on Garner and arrest him for a minor "quality of life" infraction so he doesn't end up in an illegal choke hold that suffocates the life out of him on the street.

But obviously we're not in a perfect world and lately it seems like there a lot of former police officers appearing on television to complain about the shrinking stature of the American police officer.

Case in point: last Monday evening when I was on the treadmill at the gym watching a debate during a segment on Out Front with Erin Burnett on the recent spike in gun violence in New York and some other major US cities.

The opposing guests were former White House nominee and social activist Van Jones, and a former member of the NYPD who seems to be CNN's latest go-to-guy "Contributor" when they need an outspoken beefy-looking ex-NYPD cop with a New York accent who will pretty much defend anything any cop does and vilify people who peacefully protest excessive use of force by cops.

I can't recall his name but he's got dark hair, says everything with an annoying ingratiating smirk on his face and looks like a character out of 'Goodfellas' or 'The Sopranos'.

It's not Thomas Verni (pictured left), the former NYPD officer who's also a frequent "Contributor" on CNN who caused a stir recently
when he posted a tragic story on his Facebook page about a 14 year-old kid / gang member who was shot and killed on his way to school.

Not long after that, three former members of the NYPD began posting comments on Verni's Facebook page that basically trashed the kid's reputation and blamed him for his own death. (No mention of lax American gun control laws of course.)

Ex-NYPD cop Brian Charles, who in response to the story on Verni's Facebook page about the 14 year-old wrote: "Fuck him. He would have wound up killing someone eventually or wound up in jail. Saved taxpayers a lot of money."

Too bad officer Charles still isn't driving around urban neighborhoods with his gun, badge and that massive chip on his shoulder; I'm sure we'd be so much safer.

At least Verni's a bit more measured and informative than ex-NYPD detective (and yes, CNN "Contributor") Harry Houck (pictured left) who recently got into an on-air shouting match with Marc Lamont Hill back in April over the staggering number of deaths of black men and boys at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department.


Anyway, back to the Van Jones and the other CNN contributor "ex-NYPD guy-whose-name-I-can't-remember" debate on Erin Burnett on Monday afternoon.

Even though the CNN producers probably told him to express the "police officer's perspective" for the segment, the ex-NYPD guy's simplistic Fox News-like approach irked me.

Van Jones is a lawyer (Yale Law School) who was appointed as Special Adviser for Green Jobs to the White House Council on Environmental Quality in 2009 before a Republican smear campaign forced him to resign his position.

He's intelligent, articulate and used reason and facts to make his point that the statistics showing increases in gun violence were being taken out of context by some people and that such increases alone do not invalidate the peaceful nationwide movements calling for police reform, more comprehensive reviews of excessive use of violence by some police; and calls for independent prosecutors to be assigned in cases of police brutality.  

The ex-NYPD guy kept trying to use the statistics showing a rise in gun violence to prove that cops are now "hesitant" to do their jobs in high-crime areas because of the nation-wide backlash against the unchecked use of excessive police force.

As if peaceful protests, demands for better policing and reforms of America's dysfunctional justice system are in themselves, causing increased violence. It was a weak argument considering that more balanced analysis shows that the bulk of the gun violence increases in New York for instance are taking place between gang members in very specific neighborhoods.

CNN's 'Out Front' host Erin Burnett

What irked me about Erin Burnett's questions, which were obviously intended to throw some gas on this debate, was how she asked Van Jones to comment on one of ex-NYPD guy's points then played a short video clip of a small group of black protesters walking down a street yelling some hard to discern anti-cop slogans.

She offered no context to the video clip, no date of when it shot, where it was taken, or what specific incident had sparked the comments.

It was as if she'd offered up the clip as "proof" that all black people are "anti-cop" and that such protests are a direct cause of the spike in gun violence around the nation.

I don't mean to belabor the point, I guess it just got under my skin because the issue of deteriorating police relationships and mistrust with the communities they serve warranted a more rational and balanced response from law enforcement than the ex-NYPD guy she brought on to spar with Jones.

Her interview style can at times be annoyingly chirpy and urgent. As a former television reporter, I sometimes feel like she's staring at a ticking clock behind the camera and is waiting to tick off her points rather than engage in more thoughtful questions.

I have nothing against her but personally I've never been a real big Erin Burnett fan; and I've always been sort of mystified as to why she got the time slot and the show in the first place.

I certainly don't want to come off as dismissively sexist and suggest it's her model-like looks, because she's obviously intelligent and has a quick mind; I guess it's just her style and personae that doesn't click with me.

Besides, CNN has a lot of intelligent female anchors I respect and go out of my way to watch; including Candy Crowley and Dana Bash for their excellent coverage and analysis of politics.

As far as CNN goes, personally I think Brooke Baldwin is a far superior interviewer who's much more natural and instinctual with guests. To me Erin Burnett always seems like she's taking a test that she's determined not to fail.

That said, I'm making an effort to try and understand what police officers are so upset about; particularly all these ex-NYPD guys serving as contributors on CNN.

I lived in New York City during 911 and I remember how people heaped adulation, affection and sympathy upon NYPD officers for months after the Towers came down; even though it was the tail end of the Giuliani era when relations between black New Yorkers and the NYPD were at an all-time low. Any cop in a bar back then could not buy a drink because everyone wanted to buy them one; or several - I know, I was a bartender in an Irish bar on Amsterdam Avenue & 80th street on the Upper West Side and I served plenty of them myself.

When I first moved to Manhattan in the late 90's the papers were full of horrific stories of innocent African-Americans and black New Yorker's killed (Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond) or sadistically abused (Abner Louima) by members of the NYPD.

When 911 happened on September 11, 2001, it sort of had the affect of rehabilitating their public image in the city to a degree. Watching some of these ex-NYPD guys on CNN, I wonder if some of them are having a hard time wrapping their minds around the level of national opposition and outrage at some of the tactics and incidents that have garnered global headlines and tarnished the reputation of the NYPD and other municipal police forces in Ferguson, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland and elsewhere.

Listening to some of these guys on television, they seem genuinely confused at the level of public outrage over the killings of completely innocent people who are unarmed; as if such things are simply part of "the job" and not to be scrutinized by the public police are sworn to protect.

The prevalence and instantaneous nature of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram along with the reality that almost everyone is now armed with a functioning video camera in their cell phone has forever altered that ability of police to simply slip behind the Blue Wall of silence to avoid public scrutiny of actions that are illegal - or mistakes that turn deadly.

Police have operated that way for a long time in this nation but now technology is altering that faster than their policy and training can keep up with.

The uncomfortable reality is that if it weren't for cell phone video, Eric Garner's death in Staten Island or Freddie Gray's death in police custody in Baltimore would never even have resulted in an indictment of an officer let alone a trial.

Technology and the Internet have had the effect of making policing in America almost like professional sports in the sense that now almost everything they do is seen on some kind of camera; whether it's a dashboard camera mounted in the police vehicle, a CCTV mounted on the street, a bystander on the street with a cell phone, or increasingly, cameras mounted on officers themselves.

The Blue Wall of Silence can no longer shield the actions of police officers as it once did in this country and technology is having the partial effect of eroding the sense of invincibility that so many cops talk about having.

They are being forced to come to grips with the reality that they are not simply licensed to kill like James Bond.

Citizens, journalists and activists are no longer waiting for the Federal Government to create a comprehensive database of police killings in the United States; as I mentioned in my blog about the Oklahoma Highway Patrol's killing of Pastor Nehemiah Fischer on Monday, multiple organizations are now keeping and gathering much more detailed statistics on police killings, leaving American law enforcement under greater public scrutiny than they've ever been before.

To borrow a phrase from writer Flannery O'Connor's December 9, 1956 letter to J.F. Powers, these days American police are "a very disgruntled crew" indeed.

'Dismal Handgun Performance' - Cleveland Police Officer Who Shot & Killed 12 Year-Old Tamir Rice Was Forced To Resign From Previous Job For Incompetence

CPD officer Timothy Loehmann

My desire to blog about issues other than unchecked police violence in America has run up against the wall of the growing public outcry against said police consistently not being held accountable for the inappropriate use of lethal force against people of color.

One of the unfortunate results of two separate juries in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York finding no grounds to charge police officers in the deaths of two different unarmed African-American men, is that even more public focus will be directed upon the city of Cleveland with regards to the death of 12 year-old Tamir Rice.

The release of recent documents suggests the case in Cleveland is about to take a sad turn that makes the case even more tragic than it already is.

The release of yesterday's report on MSNBC.com about documents showing that Timothy A. Loehmann (pictured above, left), the 26 year-old rookie Cleveland police officer who shot Tamir Rice, had been forced to resign from his previous job as a patrolmen in the suburban Cleveland Independence police department because of his lackluster training performance is heartbreaking.

The MSNBC article by M. Alex Johnson quotes a memo dated November, 2012 from Independence PD deputy chief Jim Polak who states:

“Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl. Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak wrote on Nov. 29. “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies.” Five days later, Loehmann resigned."

Now if Loehmann was as incompetent as this memo suggests, what the Hell was he doing on the Cleveland Police Department?

The MSNBC article quotes deputy chief Polak as saying of Loehman, “his handgun performance was dismal.”

If his ability to use a firearm was so "dismal", did the members of the HR department responsible for hiring CPD officers even bother to look at that memo before hiring him?

The Tamir Rice tragedy begins (in part) with the fact that Loehmann was the guy the Cleveland Police dispatcher sent to a public park to confront a 12 year-old playing with a pellet gun.

Obviously there's still a long way to go in the investigation of the death of Tamir Rice, and whether or not Timothy Loehmann will face charges, but we appear to be at a precipice in this nation.

I'm a realistic optimist, but I have to believe that Loehmann's competency, coupled with the growing national demand for justice in cases like this, will have some kind of impact on whether this case will see the inside of a courtroom.

The curious reluctance of state and local courts to actively prosecute cases of police brutality against people of color has been commonplace for over two centuries; so it's not going to change overnight.

But perhaps the widespread use of technology like video, combined with social media platforms and the speed of the Internet will serve as a catalyst to speed that up.

Not that we really need another example of police brutality against black people, but take the Texas grand jury who didn't indict Jasper, Texas officers Ricky Grissom and Ryan Cunningham; who were caught on videotape beating the crap out of a black Jasper civilian named Keyarika Diggles.

As an article by Sam Brodey posted on MotherJones.com reported, Ms. Diggles is a black woman who had been already been jailed in May, 2013 over a $100 parking ticket (which she had been making regular payments on...) when video tape shows officers Grissom and Cunningham slamming her head against a counter and dragging her into a cell by her feet.

Remember, Ms. Diggles was already inside the jail.

For arguments sake, let's just say that no video of either the shooting of Tamir Rice, or the vicious beating of Ms. Diggles existed; would there have been any external pressure to prosecute the officers in these two very different but very tragic cases?

The answer points to a deep schism in this country that must be bridged; and soon.