Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department with first black chief to take over Tamir Rice investigation
CLEVELAND, Ohio – After weeks of calls for an outside probe of the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the Cleveland police department will hand the investigation over to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department.
Mayor Frank Jackson said the decision, announced Friday, is the best way to ensure accountability in a deadly force investigation.
"The decision to turn the investigation over was made to ensure that transparency and an extra layer of separation and impartiality were established," Jackson said in a release.
Northeast Ohio Media Group reported Wednesday that the
city was in discussions to transfer the investigation to the sheriff's department, but the agencies had not reached a formal agreement.
Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish has tapped the sheriff department's number two officer, Chief Clifford Pinkney, to spearhead a team of detectives who will investigate the shooting.
Pinkney, a 23-year veteran, is the department's first black chief.
The police department's Use of Deadly Force Investigation Team has been collecting evidence since rookie Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann shot Tamir Nov. 22. The boy was waving an airsoft-type gun in Cudell Commons, and Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, thought the gun was real, police said.
Much of the evidence, including witness interviews and video footage captured by
surveillance cameras outside the Cudell Recreation Center, has already been collected, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Many aspects of the shooting have come under scrutiny and activists, as well as attorneys representing Tamir's family, have called for an outside agency to investigate the incident.
The calls became even louder after a report from the U.S. Department of Justice lambasted the city for the way the department for how it trains officers in using deadly force, investigates uses of deadly force and disciplines officers for using force.
Michael Nelson, an attorney and co-chair of the Cleveland NAACP's criminal justice committee, praised Pinkney, but asked why the city took 41 days to transfer the investigation to an outside agency.
"What has the city been doing all this time?" Nelson asked. "They should have just handed this thing off to another agency when they got it."
City spokesman Dan Williams said the hand-off negotiations, which started before Christmas, were the first between Cleveland a third-party agency.
"The first time you do anything it takes a while," Williams said. "But even if it had taken 60 days, this is still the right decision.
"Getting the right person was the most important thing, and the right person to do this is Chief Pinkney."
Pinkney joined the department as a deputy in 1991, and has worked in the detective bureau, narcotics bureau, sex offender unit, internal affairs and served on the FBI Task Force that dealt with guns, drugs and wiretaps. Pinkney has also received FBI and U.S. Marshal training.
Video shows Cleveland police officer fatally shoot 12-year-old Tamir RiceWarning: This video may contain graphic images. Surveillance video captured Nov. 22, 2014 shows a Cleveland police officer fatally shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice at the Cudell Recreation Center at Detroit Avenue and West Boulevard. This video is taken during a Cleveland Police press conference. An uncut version of this video will be available once provided by Cleveland Police.
He successfully sued for his job back after then Sheriff Gerald McFaul fired him in March 2008. Pinkney, then a lieutenant, sent a photograph of a handcuffed man being escorted into the Cuyahoga County Justice Center to a coworker.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in 2009 McFaul treated Pinkney more harshly than white employees and violated Pinkney's civil rights. Pinkey was reinstated with back pay, but did not seek punitive damages.
"With his experience and understanding of the need for integrity, I trust he will conduct a thorough and impartial investigation," Nelson said.
Cuyahoga County Sheriff Frank Bova, a third-generation lawman, took the reigns of the sheriff's department in 2009 on a temporary basis, after McFaul resigned after a series of Plain Dealer Publishing Company stories. He was chosen in 2013 to replace outgoing sheriff Bob Reid. Bova spent 16 years as a patrolman and detective in Cleveland police department's vice unit and strike force, according to a 2010 Plain Dealer Publishing Company article. He spent nine years as chief of the Warrensville Heights Police Department before joining the sheriff's department.