Tim Loehmann, the Cleveland Police Officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and his partner, Frank Garmback, both have storied police histories. Earlier this year, Officer Garmback was involved in an excessive force lawsuit that settled for $100,000. Officer Tim Loehmann was described by high-ranking officials on the Independence Police Department (where he previously worked) as someone who “could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal.”
Profoundly, Independence Deputy Chief Jim Polak wrote this about Loehmann: “time nor training will be able to change or correct the deficiencies.”
Too bad Cleveland’s Police Department didn’t “look at Loehmann’s personnel file” before he was hired; Tamir Rice might be alive today.
As a 20-year veteran police sergeant of the Los Angeles Police Department, I can assert that not everyone who “wants” to become a police officer “should” become a police officer. As a field training officer and supervisor in patrol, I had the responsibility of observing and evaluating probationary and tenured police officers. So, believe me when I say that I am profoundly disappointed when an obvious and documented unfit police officer is not properly “banished to the corn fields.”
In a recent interview, I was asked if I thought former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Mike Brown, would have a hard time finding another job as a police officer after his resignation from Ferguson. Of course, my response was, “No.” I have personal knowledge of errant police officers who were either fired or allowed to resign or retire in lieu of termination who have “lived to offend again.”
Much like Darren Wilson—fired from the Jennings Police Department before he was hired by the Ferguson Police—and St. Louis Police Officers Association Manager Jeff Roorda—fired by the Arnold, Missouri, Police Department before he went on to become the Police Chief in Kimmswick—Cleveland Officer Tim Loehmann was given a second chance—a chance Tamir Rice will not have.
Resignation for some police officers is the gift that keeps on giving. When a police department allows one of its officers to resign in lieu of termination, understand that there is no punishment in that designation. In many cases, bad behavior does not follow officers to their new department.
So, out-of-control, scary, have-no-business-carrying-a-gun police officers have no problem finding “a new church home.” And while I am on it, let me add that white privilege helps; because I know of no black [fired] police officers similarly graced.
Now then, let’s examine the personnel files, of “lying…distracted…and weepy” Cleveland Officer Tim Loehmann, who was reportedly such an emotional wreck while on the Independence Police Department that his superiors contacted his parents out of “concern for his well-being,” that Officer Tim Loehmann who later joined the Cleveland police department, after having been fired from Independence, “because he wanted more action”.
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