Ten years ago this week on November 22, 2014, twelve year old Tamir Rice was shot by police while playing with a toy gun in a park in Cleveland, OH. He died the next day. Tamir’s death shocked people around the country and was a catalyst in the emerging Black Lives Matter movement. The county medical examiner ruled Tamir’s death a homicide, but a grand jury chose not to indict the officer who shot him. Although the original 911 call reported that the person aiming a gun was probably a juvenile with a fake gun, the specifics of that call were not communicated to the officers who responded. Nonetheless, video footage of the shooting showed that the officer shot Tamir within seconds of arriving. When his fourteen year old sister rushed to the scene to be with her fatally wounded brother, she was tackled, hand cuffed, and put in the police car. Neither of the officers on the scene provided medical attention for Tamir.
Ten years after Tamir’s killing, we can only imagine what his life would have been today as a twenty two year old young man. Whatever scenerios we imagine remain purely hypothetical because his life was tragically cut off at the age of twelve. What we can imagine and work for is a society in which assumed criminality is not assigned to Black boys and men. We can imagine and work for a society in which police violence is reduced especially in the neighborhoods of people of color. As people who believe that every person is created in the image of God, let us both remember the names of those whose lives were cut short due to racial bias and commit ourselves to building systems of justice and equality for all.
The first video posted below is a brief summary of the events surrounding Tamir’s death. The second video features a story about the gazebo in the park where he was killed. It was repurposed as both a memorial and a place for conversations about race and police brutality in our nation.