Officer who shot, killed Tamir Rice hired at West Virginia police department

The police officer who killed Tamir Rice is now working for a police department in West Virginia.

Timothy Loehmann shot and killed Tamir, a 12-year-old boy, in 2014.

Loehmann now works for a White Sulfur Police Force in West Virginia.

He was not charged in connection to the shooting of Rice and was cleared by a grand jury. However, he lost his job with the Cleveland Division of Police for lying on his application.

In 2022, Loehmann was hired as a police officer for Tioga, a small borough in Pennsylvania with a population of around 700 people.

RELATED: Officer who shot, killed Tamir Rice hired as sole police officer of Tioga, Pennsylvania

However, Loehmann withdrew his application shortly after.

RELATED: Timothy Loehmann withdraws application for Tioga, PA police officer

Attorney Subodh Chandra, who co-represented Rice's family, released the following statement regarding Loehmann's hiring:

White Sulphur Springs's police chief and its public officials evidently don’t care that (1) the City of Independence, Ohio considered Timothy Loehmann mentally unfit for duty, (2) Cleveland fired him because he lied on his application (a firing affirmed on appeals), (3) he rushed upon and slew a child, and (4) in the ensuing investigation he lied about calling out warnings to Tamir when his fellow officer said the windows were up that fateful winter's day.

While any normal person (and certainly any child) would grasp that Loehmann should never be entrusted with a badge and gun, some people love lying, child-killing cops so much that they are determined to foist him on the rest of us.

Every time Loehmann resurfaces in his game of bad-cop whack-a-mole, he torments the family of Tamir Rice. Why can't he just go away and live the rest of his life—life he deprived Tamir of—in humility? Why does he insist on being a cop? It seems pathological at this point.

And what sort of crazy public officials don't care that they must now disclose that he's a known liar to defendants in every criminal case he's involved in? Loehmann is a Brady/Giglio cop because of his lies on his police application and during the Tamir Rice investigation, and because Independence found him unfit. Timothy Loehmann should be radioactive to any sensible member of law enforcement community.

Officials who think its okay to hire him as a cop are betraying their citizens' trust. As a former federal prosecutor, I'm disgusted by the lack of integrity.

Let’s hope White Sulphur Springs residents have the good sense to condemn the poor judgment of their morally bankrupt police chief.

It's also deeply troubling that White Sulphur Springs police are retaliating against those (including journalists) who ask questions about Loehmann by quashing their First Amendment rights. But it tells us what we need to know about the indifference of public officials there to civil rights.

White Sulphur Spring officials should be sued over that and the city bankrupted.

Tamir would have turned 22 this year.

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