Pennsylvania town ‘broke the law’ by hiring police officer who killed Tamir Rice

Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro said last week that the small Pennsylvania town that hired the former police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland eight years ago did not perform a legally required background check before extending its offer.

The Washington Post reported that Mr Shapiro informed Tigoa Borough President Steve Hazlett last Friday that his town was in violation of a state act mandating that municipalities run checks when hiring law enforcement officers.

The police officer, Timothy Loehmann, resigned his position in Tioga just two days after being sworn in.

The requiste background check Tioga officials were supposed to do in advance of the hire would have revealed that when Mr Loehmann was a 26-year-old police officer in Cleveland in 2014, he and a fellow police officer responded to a call about an individual pointing a pistol at people at Cudell Recreation Center.

The individual was Mr Rice, and the gun was a toy replica of a gun, not a real one. Nevertheless, Mr Loehmann shot Mr Rice twice almost immediately after arriving at the scene. The 12-year-old died the following day.

Before joining the Cleveland Police Department, Mr Loehmann had served as a police officer in Independence, Ohio, where he had been deemed emotionally unstable and unfit for duty. But Mr Loehmann did not disclose those findings on his application to join the Cleveland Police Department, and the department did not review his personnel file before hiring him.

A grand jury ultimately declined to indict Mr Loehmann and his fellow officer for the death of Mr Rice, but Mr Loehmann was terminated by the Cleveland Police Department for withholding information on his job application. Years later, in 2020, the US Department of Justice also declined to bring charges against the officers.

Mr Rice’s family sued the two officers, the city of Cleveland, and the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio for wrongful death. The lawsuit was settled in April of 2016, with the city agreeing to pay Mr Rice’s family $6 million.

Mr Loehmann’s employment journey since his termination in Cleveland has included a pair of false starts. He was hired as a part-time officer by the city of Bellaire, Ohio, in 2018 before withdrawing his application to join the force and leaving training after five days.

Pennsylvania passed the Act 57 in 2020 in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to ensure that police officers with records of misconduct cannot simply transfer from one department to another.

“Act 57 was passed to ensure that departments are fully aware of a candidate’s past history of misconduct and any resulting discipline — to prevent the type of circumstances that occurred in your borough with the hiring of Timothy Loehmann and his subsequent withdrawal of his application,” Shapiro wrote in a letter to Mr Hazlett. “To be clear, failure to thoroughly check a potential hire’s background, including searching the database for any past disciplinary activities, is a violation of state law.”

Act 57 does not have a clear enforcement mechanism, but the Williamsport Sun-Gazette reported that Mr Hazlett and his wife nevertheless submitted their resignations to the borough council on Friday. Mr Hazlett said that he was aware of Mr Loehmann’s past and that the city’s mayor, David Wilcox, was as well before he swore Mr Loehmann in. Mr Wilcox has denied that he had knowledge of the officer’s past.

Mr Hazlett’s role in the saga brought scrutiny to his social media accounts, where a 2015 Facebook post showed him mocking Mr Rice’s death: “Dumb enough to pull a fake gun, dumb enough to get shot......,” Mr Hazlett wrote.