Unfit for Duty

Thursday, December 4th, 2014

If you watch the surveillance video of Tamir Rice, you see a “youth” in a hoodie, walking around with a handgun out, and then “10 minutes later,” that same individual getting up from a park bench as a patrol car comes screaming onto the scene — silently, because there’s no audio, and at a very low frame-rate, too.

It does look like Tamir reaches down to his waistband with his right hand — and then he’s down. We have no audio, so we don’t know if the cop yelled “Hands up!” or not — but if Tamir was reaching for a gun, it’s hard to blame the officer for shooting first, even if it turned out to be a replica.

It does raise the question of why they came roaring in like that though. Did they think they had an active shooter situation?

I don’t know the standard protocol for addressing a thug with a pistol, but I’d want my shotgun and some distance — and back-up, of course.

It turns out the real reason everything went sideways is likely pretty simple — the officer who shot Tamir Rice was unfit for duty:

The Independence police memo describes an episode in which a supervising officer suspended gun training with Loehmann after Loehmann had an emotional breakdown about a girlfriend.

“During a state range qualification course, Ptl Loehmann was distracted and weepy,” Polak wrote, naming the trainer as Sgt Tinnirello. “[Loehmann] could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal. Sgt Tinnirello tried to work through this with Ptl Loehmann by giving him some time. But, after some talking it was clear to Sgt Tinnirello that the recruit was just not mentally prepared to be doing firearm training …

“Ptl Loehmann continued with his emotional meltdown to a point where Sgt Tinnirello could not take him into the store, so they went to get something to eat and he continued to try and calm Ptl Loehmann. Sgt Tinnirello describes the recruit as being very downtrodden, melancholy with some light crying. Sgt Tinnirello later found this emotional perplexity was due to a personal issue with Ptl Loehmann’s on and off again girlfriend whom he was dealing with till 0400 hrs the night before. (Pti Loehmann was scheduled for 0800 the morning in question).”

Some of the comments made by Ptl Loehmann during this discourse were to the effect of, “I should have gone to NY”, “maybe I should quit”, “I have no friends”, “I only hang out with 73-year-old priests”, “I have cried every day for four months about this girl.”

In recommending Loehmann’s dismissal, Polak listed what he said were other performance shortcomings, including Loehmann’s having left his gun unlocked, lied to supervisors and failed to follow orders.

“Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak concludes. “For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

Comments

  1. Alrenous says:

    Lesson 1: The cops are failing to discharge blatantly incompetent trainees in a timely manner.

    Sublesson 1: These cops are actually pretty good as bureaucracies go. Most will lie about the trainee and not discharge them at all, e.g, public schools.

    Lesson 2: Even blatantly incompetent cops correctly shoot dangerous thugs. Their incompetence is mainly optics — they shoot them at the wrong time.

  2. Gary Seven says:

    I’d bet my last dollar his girlfriend has Borderline Personality Disorder.

  3. Toddy Cat says:

    If one had to choose, I always thought that, if you wanted to get Blacks riled up, the Tamir Rice shooting was a lot more questionable than the whole Ferguson thing. Leave it to the leftist media to f**k things up, like they always do.

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