July 7, 2022

I believe in second chances. I believe that many police shootings are tragic mistakes -- but that doesn't mean you should get another chance to make the same mistake, as we see here with the cop who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Via News5 Cleveland:

TIOGA, PA — Former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann has been hired as the one and only officer of Tioga, a small borough in Pennsylvania with a population of around 700 people, according to Mayor David Wilcox.

[...] The mayor said he sat in on Loehmann's interview and his time in Cleveland came up but nothing was ever mentioned about his role in Tamir Rice's death.

Council unanimously approved Loehmann's hiring at $18 per hour. He was hired on a 90-day probationary period, and according to the mayor, the intention was to promote him to chief after a successful period.

Loehmann was previously hired as a part-time officer in a small Ohio village of Bellaire in 2018, but shortly after reports of the new job surfaced, he withdrew his application.

Now, here's the part where his worthiness for second chances flies out the window:

Loehmann was fired by the Cleveland Division of Police in 2017, more than two years after the fatal shooting, for lying on his application and violating other administrative policies.

City officials charged Loehmann for failing to provide truthful information on his application. Officials said they discovered Loehmann was in the process of being fired from his previous department for his “lack of maturity” and an incident involving an emotional meltdown during firearm training, according to Cleveland police.

Not to state the obvious, but Tamir Rice will never get a second chance. At this point, it looks like Loehmann is fixated on being a cop -- and maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe he should go back to school and learn computer programming.

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