Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice Briefly Hired by Small Pennsylvania Town
After community outrage and the mayor saying he wasn't told about Timothy Loehmann's policing background, the officer withdrew his application.
A town of fewer than 1,000 people in northern Pennsylvania hired the former police officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and the murky circumstances of his hiring have prompted outrage, protests, and ultimately the officer's withdrawal of his application.
On Tuesday, the council for Tioga swore Timothy Loehmann in as an officer after a unanimous vote in favor of his hiring.
In 2014, Loehmann was one of the officers responding to a 911 call about somebody in a Cleveland park holding a gun. The caller thought the gun might be fake, but this information was not relayed to cops. Rice, who was 12, was indeed in the park playing with what turned out to be a fake gun. When Loehmann, a rookie cop, arrived on the scene, he exited the police car and shot Rice almost immediately, giving the boy no opportunity to surrender.
The Cleveland police's terrible handling of the situation inspired national protests. Loehmann was ultimately fired from the police department, but not for shooting Rice. Loehmann was never charged with a crime for the reckless circumstances of the shooting (the county prosecutor even attempted to discourage charges against Loehmann and was later bounced out of office by voters). Loehmann was actually fired for lying to the Cleveland Division of Police about the circumstances surrounding his departure from his previous job as a police officer in Independence, Ohio. He concealed that he was forced to resign or be fired in 2012 after being deemed "unfit for duty" for his "dismal" handgun skills and apparent emotional instability. In 2020, the Department of Justice announced it would not be filing federal charges against Loehmann for the shooting.
The details of how Loehmann has ended up as a police officer again are a bit muddled and troubling. The story appears to have been broken by the Williamsport Post-Gazette. Correspondent Garrett Carr interviewed Tioga Mayor David Wilcox and people who had shown up at Tioga borough offices to protest after finding out what happened on Facebook after Loehmann was sworn in. Wilcox said he attended interviews of Loehmann but wasn't "allowed" to see the applications prior to his vote and didn't know who Loehmann was but was told that he had been subjected to a thorough background check.
Even more troubling, Carr says local press were told his name was "Lochmann," not Loehmann, and Wilcox also said he had been told a different name. It was only after Borough Council President Steve Hazlett posted an image on Facebook of Loehmann's swearing in Tuesday evening that the truth came out. Protests followed the next day.
Hazlett's photo of Loehmann's swearing in was deleted from Facebook earlier today. And the website for Tioga now has a statement from officials that Loehmann is already gone: "Effective this morning Timothy Loehmann has officially with drawn his application for Tioga Borough Police Officer."
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has attempted to reach out to Hazlett for an explanation of what has happened and hasn't gotten a response. As of Wednesday, Carr has been unable to get comments from Hazlett or another council member about how Loehmann ended up getting hired. The entire borough's office is closed until next week.
Wilcox appears to agree with those who are angry at Loehmann's hiring (despite his own role in it). He told them at the protest that as the person responsible for creating Loehmann's work schedule, he would make sure the officer wasn't put out on patrol.
This isn't the first time Loehmann attempted to get back onto a police force. He resurfaced again in 2018 when he was hired to join the Bellaire, Ohio, police force, but subsequently left it as well. It is unfortunately not an unusual event for a police officer with a bad history on one police force to move somewhere else and attempt to get hired again. Loehmann has a much higher profile because of the national outrage Rice's killing evoked. But it's an ongoing problem that police officers with histories of misconduct find ways to conceal their behavior (up until recently, disciplinary records of police officers in states like New York and California were kept secret under law), shift around to new cities and towns, and get new jobs on other police forces.
In May, President Joe Biden included a plan for a national database to keep track of problem cops in an executive order. However, it will be used primarily to screen applicants for federal law enforcement jobs. It will be made accessible to local police and they'll be "encouraged to enter their records," but the administration doesn't actually have the authority to mandate local or state participation.
The good news here is that the community and media saw what was going on and responded, and it appears that the town's mayor is not happy at what seems to have been deception. Given the community's response, Loehmann's quiet exit is not a surprise. But don't be surprised when he tries yet again to get hired by another small police force unaware of his past.
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I hate to defend a cop, but remember that video. I’d have hated to have been in his place. His partner, the driver, drove right up so that the shooter was right next to Rice, and *potentially* in danger. The driver cop was more at fault. He should have stopped the car far away, so they could have told Rice to drop the “gun” from a safe location.
You need to look at the video again. Car drives up, Loehmann gets out of the safe side and plugs Rice almost immediately.
People like Loehmann and Typhoid Mary have an apparently pathological need to work in occupations where they can do the most harm.
You need to re-read the comment. Part of the problem was the driver stopped too close to the kid, leaving Loehmann less room for maneuver or observation. Loehmann may well be an asshole unsuited to be a cop, but he wasn’t the only one to blame that evening.
They’re both major fuck-ups who should not be trusted with loaded weapons.
By the way, I was just thinking the other day: Did Cleveland squad cars not have dash cameras? I’ve never seen a dashcam view of the Tamir Rice shooting, and I’m wondering why it doesn’t exist.
2014 was when many departments still didn’t have bodycams, but dashcams have been around since at least the 80s. Usually dashcams have microphones as well, so we’d have so audio, and hear if the officers were shouting incoherent gibberish at Tamir right before they plugged him.
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Also, yeah, the driver skidding to a stop 2 feet in front of the kid probably caused him to panic, so he couldn’t even respond properly.
Imagine if they parked like 50 yards away, looked at what was happening, and called out to ask the kid if he had a gun. Imagine if they opened with simply asking questions and getting information, rather than rolling in like Wyatt Earp. And even the fucking Earps walked into the situation and told the Cowboys to drop their guns before they started unloading.
I agree it took 2 fuck-ups to really fuck up this situation. Really way more than 2. Why were these cops not trained to de-escalate from a distance when possible? Training, police culture, management, police unions and the list goes on all the way down to voters share the blame. But in any case, at the very least, neither of these 2 should ever be a cop again.
They also weren’t informed by the dispatcher of things the reporting party said that could have helped them with a better mindset going in. Like the 911 caller saying it was probably a toy gun and it looked like a kid.
These cops went in expecting it to be a real gun. Then handled it badly, but from the git go they were on the wrong footing.
Seems like fuckups everywhere made everything worse. But that’s the way a lot of bad things happen, a chain of things going wrong, if any one had been handled better the chain would be broken and the end result could have been better.
Everybody makes mistakes. But to really fuck something up you use a committee.
Even better when the committee members know they can’t be held accountable for anything that goes wrong.
They also weren’t informed by the dispatcher of things the reporting party said that could have helped them with a better mindset going in. Like the 911 caller saying it was probably a toy gun and it looked like a kid.
I have a difficult time believing that’s what happened. It makes more sense to me that the information was relayed to the cops, and they simply ignored it. That’s what cops do.
You are missing context that even though it was a fake gun, Rice had taken off the red tab so it looked real, and he was holding it an approaching the police car. I don’t know if he was aiming it at the police, the video is too grainy to tell. But he didn’t drop it.
He wasn’t even holding it, though, it was tucked into his waistband.
He was also 12 years old and did something very stupid, but being a stupid 12 year old isn’t really justification for someone to shoot you.
Self-defense requires more than someone else possessing a gun. You cannot simply see someone with a gun who hasn’t shot anyone and reasonably believe that they’re going to shoot you. And this is true whether or not you happen to be a cop.
If this happens to you and you shoot a 12 year old with a fake gun, I wouldn’t be so heartless as to say that it’s aggravated murder by the letter of the law and you should get the death penalty. But you should, at the very least, never be allowed to carry a gun again, as you’ve shown you can’t be trusted with it.
This guy really needs to try to find some other type of employment.
But as for the issue of bad cops getting rehired, I’ve heard that there’s a ton of areas suffering significant staffing shortages. The demand for cops seems to be greater than the supply, so standards are being lowered.
The demand for cops is greater than the supply because… who wants to work in a profession that half the country hates with a passion, where people shoot at you, and where you risk at least a massive lawsuit just for defending your life.
Not only is the supply getting smaller, the conditions under which cops have to operate these days means that decent, non-psychopathic people simply don’t choose the profession anymore.
You definitely hit on huge issues when it comes to attracting police officers.
Policing barely makes the top 20 most dangerous jobs.
“…where you risk at least a massive lawsuit just for defending your life.”
No you don’t. That’s what QI is for. You only risk a lawsuit if the incident makes the news and causes riots. Other than that police officers literally do whatever they want, because no one will stop them.
I know a few people who were cops for a little while. They quit because of the culture. They felt pressured to be arrogant douchebags. They watched their fellows lie on reports and in court, and knew they’d be the ones who got fired if they reported it. Good people are simply not welcome in police departments.
Maybe that’s why they have such a difficult time keeping people. Not enough scumbags.
There’s an obvious solution…..
Well, this is Reason, so what you said is like saying Beetlejuice into the mirror and we’ll get Fiona Harrigan writing an article about how we need to let all the Mexicans and Central Americans who want to come across the wide-open border and seek illegal employment.
My question is why the outrage at the mayor? Just being part of interviews doesn’t mean you are privy to the background check or other information and you certainly don’t get to snap pics to compare to some mythical database of bad press. And the guy has a history of lying.
Remember the plaque on Harry S Truman’s desk which read “The Buck Stops Here”? The Mayor is the ultimate elected official in that city and answerable to the voters (as are council members) for the mistakes and misdeeds of the bureaucrats and miscellaneous “public servants” of the city.
I’m sure I’ll get flamed for saying this, but I find this kind of creepy. Would I have hired Loehmann? Probably not. Do I think he should probably find another line of work? Sure. Hell, he may even well deserve to be fired for lying on his application and interview. But, following this guy around and insisting he be fired from any police job he gets? How many people here support the initiatives saying that employers aren’t allowed to ask about criminal histories?
But, following this guy around and insisting he be fired from any police job he gets?
More like following him around and telling his potential employers the truth about his job history, since apparently police department don’t bother to do background checks on applicants.
Right. I don’t think this guy should continue looking for employment as a police officer.
I doubt, but can’t say for sure, people would harass an accounting firm if they hired him.
It’s that “can’t say for sure” that bothers me. I have even less confidence in the goodwill of the people tracking down Loehmann (including Shackford) than you. You’d think, if it were strictly about his fitness for the job, there’d be at least some effort in the article to consider what might have changed since he screwed up. But, nothing.
And, I think of it this way, if there were some guy who made it his mission to go around telling employers about the criminal background of various hirees and publicizing employees criminal background to the public, would Scott Shackford and Reason magazine hail this guy as a hero and his mission as a noble quest? Or would we be reading an article about what a POS that hall-monitoring POS is?
“following him around and telling his potential employers the truth”… which of course comes with the built-in implied threat that if the employer doesn’t comply and fire him they’ll be added to the cancellation list.
Which, judging from their reactions, seems to be precisely what went on here.
If police departments did their due diligence then this wouldn’t be an issue.
Looks to me like you guys would rather defend and excuse bad cops than expect departments to do background checks because you don’t like the politics of the people who had the audacity to expect the police to call an applicant’s references.
The article I read was about a police department that didn’t check references, and thankfully someone made them.
Did we read the same thing?
And there are other top-level comments that focus only on that bit. And not on the questionable means being employed.
Then I really don’t understand what you’re saying.
It looks like you’d be fine with the guy being hired by departments that don’t check references because that’s better than concerned citizens (or bullies as you call them) pointing out his background.
What am I getting wrong here?
You call them “bullies.” I call them concerned citizens protecting the community from a known murderer with a badge.
What he did was unlawful. Unfortunately the law does not apply to police officers.
Police want to be considered professionals. If so, they must be made to understand that once it has been proven that they failed to achieve or maintain the standards required, they will not be allowed to work in the profession again. Ever. This is certainly true for doctors and engineers, whose decisions can lead to deaths. But it is also true for lawyers and accountants.
Loehmann should learn to code. I wouldn’t trust him to police a retirement home, let alone a middle school.
Except we don’t hold doctors, engineers, lawyers and accountants to that standard. Doctors with judgements against them for malpractice are still in practicing. A Justice Department lawyer got caught out and out forging evidence for a FISA warrant. His punishment was a three month suspension.
Like I said above, would I hire him as a policeman? Probably not. Someone else made a different judgement call. And people with no connection to the area decided to come in to hound the guy out of his job. And it sure sounds like they wouldn’t in any way be effected by this guy working as a cop in small town Pennsylvania.
Except we don’t hold doctors, engineers, lawyers and accountants to that standard.
They don’t carry guns and have a job that lets them literally get away with murder.
Doctors with judgements against them for malpractice are still in practicing.
Other doctors have their licenses pulled.
A Justice Department lawyer got caught out and out forging evidence for a FISA warrant. His punishment was a three month suspension.
Government employees are held to a much lower standard than the private sector.
And people with no connection to the area decided to come in to hound the guy out of his job.
You mean they protected the community by getting the hiring department to check references like they should have done in the first place.
Though sometimes I wonder if killer cops who get fired for being bad cops get hired specifically because that’s a badge of honor for police officers.
“How many people here support the initiatives saying that employers aren’t allowed to ask about criminal histories?”
I’m pretty sure no one is saying that police departments should be banned from checking applicants’ criminal histories. But the problem here is that due to a highly questionable decision by the DA in Chicago, Loehman has no criminal history. That makes it possible for him to conceal that he is a hysterical coward who shot a child without warning, and keep trying to get hired where he’ll be put in such a position again.
At this point, I can only hope that someone will prosecute him for his false statements and convict him of a felony, so any PD that puts him through the same checks that they apply to a shoplifter will know that he is a felon barred by federal law from even touching a gun. But there’s a bigger problem – hundreds, if not thousands, of bad cops that never quite crossed over into a serious crime or made the news, and so can keep on getting hired and fired by other departments. A database of fired cops is needed or persons who have proven that they cannot be trusted with a badge will keep getting new ones.
He told them at the protest that as the person responsible for creating Loehmann’s work schedule, he would make sure the officer wasn’t put out on patrol.
Not only is the mayor scheduling police work, but this borough has enough police on staff that one can sit idle? And how does whoever is responsible for hiring this miscreant still have a job himself?
Tioga is tiny — less than 700 people. The person responsible for hiring him is likely a town council member. (Council and Mayor can say it was a vote, but somebody had to nominate him for the vote.)
I’m surprised Tioga has any police officers at all, given its location and size, unless it’s a speed trap fundraising job. Real policing duties could be handled by the county sheriff or by the state police. This might be a position subsidized by federal or state government, or caused by federal/state regulations.
Further research showed this was going to be its sole police officer.
So many things went wrong that day and led to the tragic death of a child.
Why did the dispatcher not pass along that the person who called mentioned that the “gun” was probably not real?
Why did the driver of the car drive right up to the child with the toy gun?
and why was the child not given more time to respond to demands to drop the weapon before being shot?
Either of the first two could have prevented the immediate escalation – the last one is less clear, though it’s obvious the time from arriving on the scene to having fired at the child was ridiculously short!
This guy is going to be hounded for the rest of his life.
He wasn’t charged with a crime in severely blue Cleveland. That should cluie some of you stupider people in that there’s something the media (reason included) isn’t reporting on.
There are still people who believe that Trayvon was the little kid in the picture. That Mike Brown was a ‘gentle giant’. Thanks to the media there are far too many who simply accept that young black men are pristine innocents being hunted by evil police.
“Demands to drop the weapon” is a lie by the two cops. There clearly was no time to utter such a demand.
The shooting happened because the CPD hired a rookie that a more competent department had already identified as psychologically unfit, gave him a half-witted training officer, and when the training officer stupidly placed him in a seemingly dangerous spot, this hysterical coward immediately fired in terror.
The problem with modern policing is that LEO use that as an excuse to adopt a mindset that everyone they encounter is the enemy. The state agent – the adult – has the absolute responsibility to assess a situation before taking action. There is no framing of this situation where they child was at all culpable.