Killing of Tamir Rice

On the afternoon of November 22, 2014, a 9-1-1 caller reported that a person, possibly a juvenile, was pointing a "pistol" at people at Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio, twice noting that the gun was "probably fake." The dispatcher did not relay this qualifying information to responding officers Timothy Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46. Within roughly two seconds of the patrol car stopping near the recreation center's gazebo, Loehmann exited the vehicle and fired two shots, one of which struck Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy, in the torso. Rice was carrying an airsoft replica handgun that lacked the orange safety tip normally used to distinguish such toys from real firearms. He died the following day at MetroHealth Medical Center from the gunshot wound and associated injuries.

A surveillance video of the incident, without audio, was released by the Cleveland Division of Police four days after the shooting. It showed Rice pacing in the park and appearing to move toward his waistband before Loehmann exited the still-moving patrol car and fired. No aid was administered to Rice for approximately four minutes, until an FBI agent working nearby arrived; paramedics arrived shortly after.

The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office completed its investigation in mid-2015 and forwarded findings to County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty. A municipal judge found probable cause to charge Loehmann with several offenses, including murder, and Garmback with negligent homicide, though Ohio judges lack authority to issue arrest warrants directly. McGinty commissioned outside expert reviews, including one by retired FBI agent Kimberly Crawford, which concluded the shooting was reasonable. Rice family attorneys accused McGinty of selecting biased experts. On December 28, 2015, a grand jury declined to indict either officer, with McGinty citing a "perfect storm" of errors that did not amount to criminal conduct. Rice's mother publicly accused McGinty of undermining the case. In December 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice also declined to bring federal charges, citing insufficient evidence tied in part to the poor quality of the video footage.

Rice's family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Loehmann, Garmback, and the City of Cleveland in December 2014; it was settled in April 2016 for $6 million. Separately, it emerged that Loehmann had previously been deemed emotionally unfit for duty by a suburban police department he had resigned from, information he did not disclose when hired by Cleveland; he was fired by the Cleveland police in 2017 for concealing this history. Garmback had separately been the subject of a prior excessive-force lawsuit settled by the city.

The shooting drew national and international attention amid a series of other widely covered police killings of Black men and boys in 2014, and has been cited as one of the events that helped drive the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests followed in Cleveland, and Ohio's governor established a task force on police-community relations in response.