Cleveland Orders Family of 12-Year-Old Cop Victim Tamir Rice to Pay $500 Ambulance Fee [Updated]
No justice, no decency.
Cleveland is evidently not finished traumatizing the family of Tamir Rice—the unarmed black 12-year-old boy who was shot to death by cops in a park last year. The city has filed a creditor's claim demanding that Rice's estate pay $500 for emergency medical services provided to Rice as he lay dying of his wounds.
The notion that Rice's family should owe the city anything at this point should infuriate anyone who saw the surveillance footage of Rice's shooting, which happened mere moments after the two officers arrived on scene. After opening fire on the unarmed teens, Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback did nothing to assist him. In fact, they did worse than nothing—they restrained his sister and placed her in their patrol car, preventing her from administering aid to her dying brother. The first person to intervene was an FBI agent who happened across the scene.
An attorney for the Rice family had this to say, according to clevescene.com:
"That the city would submit a bill and call itself a creditor after having had its own police officers slay 12-year-old Tamir displays a new pinnacle of callousness and insensitivity," one of Rice's family attorneys, Subodh Chandra, told Scene this afternoon. "The kind of poor judgment that it takes to do such a thing is nothing short of breathtaking. Who on earth would think this was a good idea and file this on behalf of the city? This adds insult to homicide.
"The mayor and law director should apologize to the Rice family and withdraw this filing immediately," he added.
This adds insult to homicide. Sounds about right. The government, having killed Rice for no reason, and deprived his family of any semblance of justice, is truly sociopathic if it thinks they should pay up.
Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson apologized to Rice's family. He said the claim should have been sent to the insurance company, not the family's residence. It has been withdrawn.
