Subscribe
Hellobeautiful Featured Video
CLOSE
Tamir Rice

Source: JORDAN GONZALEZ/AFP / Getty Images

Cleveland officials have agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy who was shot dead by a white police officer in 2014. 

As part of the deal, Rice’s family will drop any current charges they have against the two police officers involved, while the city will not admit to any wrongdoing, Reuters reported. According court documents, the city will pay the Rice family half the money this year and the remaining in 2017.

“Although historic in financial terms, no amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a life,” said Subodh Chandra, the Rice family’s attorney. He added, “It is the Rice family’s sincere hope that Tamir’s death will stimulate a movement for genuine change in our society and our nation’s policing,” he added.

Clearly Twitter was here for this settlement or its stipulations:

However, the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union stresses that settlements don’t bring about the much-needed change to police departments, Reuters noted. 

“Settlements are no substitute for the reforms so desperately needed in Cleveland,” Christine Link, executive director of the ACLU’s Ohio chapter, said. “The web of laws and practices that prevent accountability for police misconduct needs to be taken apart and replaced with concrete solutions to eliminate racial bias in the justice system,” Link added.

In 2014, Rice was playing with a pellet gun in the park when he was shot by officer Tim Loehmann. According to CNN, Rice’s family believed that said dispatchers who called in the officers to respond to a 911 caller’s statements, should have said that Tamir’s gun was most likely a toy. They also believed that officers approached “too aggressively…and that they failed to help the boy after he had been shot.”

Sadly, a grand jury saw it differently and failed to indict Loehmann or his partner Frank Garmback on charges of murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless or negligent homicide in December 2015.

And to add insult to injury, according to Fusion, after hearing the news that the settlement had been reached, the city’s police union sent a “disgusting and insulting” letter to the Rice family today, stating that they hope they use some of the settlement money “to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms.”

The absolute nerve.

But this type of victim-blaming isn’t new or rare for the city of Cleveland who have consistently blamed the 12-year-old for his own death, instead of looking at their trigger-happy police officers who confused a toy gun for a real one.

RELATED LINKS:

Cleveland Sues Family Of Tamir Rice For Unpaid Ambulance And Paramedics Bill

Tamir Rice: Prosecutor Will Not Release Grand Jury Transcripts

#NoJusticeNoLeBron: Protestors Want LeBron James To Show His Support For Tamir Rice

For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.