Latonya Goldsby, president and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Cleveland and Tamir’s cousin, spoke about the sentencing of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which occurred earlier in the day. The following month Loehmann appealed his case to the Ohio Supreme Court. In March 2021, a three-judge panel declined to reinstate Loehmann after it unanimously held that the police union failed to meet the deadline to serve the City’s attorneys with their application to vacate the arbitrator’s decision. CPPA then filed an appeal in the 8th District Court of Appeals in Cuyahoga County. A judge upheld the arbitrator’s ruling in December 2019. In December 2018, an arbitrator upheld the City’s decision to fire Loehmann. The police union, known as CPPA, attempted to get Loehmann reinstated by appealing the decision in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in March 2019. “We are asking every government official seeking office right now, whether they would take an endorsement from the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association,” Quarles said. This is one of several pressure points in Tamir’s Campaign for Justice. The decision was brought to light after a whistleblower complaint revealed the prosecutors asked supervisors to convene a grand jury in 2017 to consider federal charges. The article revealed that two career DOJ prosecutors were interested in pursuing federal criminal civil rights charges of excessive force and obstruction of justice against Loehmann and Garmback. The Rice family didn’t learn about the decision until over a year later when the New York Times broke the story. The civil rights case was quietly closed in August 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr. “Today we’re asking Merrick Garland and the DOJ Civil Rights Division to re-open the case that was unjustly shut down by the Trump administration,” Quarles said. Court House after marching through the streets in heavy rain.

This parade is on the move for justice,” said Josiah Quarles, organizer for Tamir’s Campaign for Justice, to the crowd gathered in front of the Carl B. ”A little rain ain’t going to stop this parade. Loehmann was fired because the City discovered he lied on his initial job application, while Garmback received a brief suspension for tactical errors he made during the fatal shooting. The goal of both actions is to spur voters to send letters to the Biden Administration, to urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division to re-open the federal criminal case against Officers Loehmann and Garmback. Another protest had already taken place a few hours earlier in Washington D.C. Rice stood in the driving rain alongside a coalition of activists and citizens preparing to march in solidarity with Tamir’s Campaign for Justice through downtown Cleveland. Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, would have been presenting gifts to her son, watching him blow out candles on a cake, and dwelling upon all the things a parent considers as their teenager transitions into adulthood. The toy gun was in his waistband when officers arrived, and Loehmann shot and killed him. Tamir was 12-years-old when he was was shot and killed by Loehmann after the officers were dispatched to the scene following a 911 call about a “guy with a gun.” Tamir had been playing with an airsoft replica pistol at the time. He would have been celebrating his birthday had he never encountered Cleveland Police Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback at the Cudell Recreation Center on November 22, 2014. About 60 demonstrators gathered in downtown Cleveland at Public Square in the pouring rain on June 25 to mark what would have been Tamir Rice’s 19th birthday.

Latonys goldspy killed by police