He Really Is Quite the Hack, This McGinty

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

01 January 16

Ohio's law clearly does not apply to everyone.

have to admit that it took a day before I could sit down and write about the thoroughgoing bag-job that was the official investigation into the summary execution-by-cop of Tamir Rice, a 12-year old who apparently had the misfortune of having a growth spurt in the fevered mind of one Officer Timothy Loehmann, who found it necessary to shoot Rice down before he could grow any bigger and more threatening. When will African American children learn not to grow so suddenly into monsters in the minds of our brave folks in blue? Personally, I blame the rap music.

"It is likely that Tamir, whose size made him look much older and who had been warned his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day, either intended to hand it over to the officers or show them it wasn't a real gun," McGinty said. "But there was no way for the officers to know that, because they saw the events rapidly unfolding in front of them from a very different perspective." It was "reasonable" to believe the officer who killed the boy believed Tamir was a threat, the prosecutor said, adding that the toy gun looked real.

He really is quite the hack, this McGinty. First, he pollutes the process by questioning the motives of Rice's grieving family. Then, by several accounts, he does his best imitation of Eddie Cicotte before the grand jury. Then, he comes out, his face as mournful as old purple and about as sincere as your average swampland entrepreneur, and talks about what a "perfect storm" of tragedy this whole case was. Like I said, he really is quite the hack, and I expect a run for Congress any day now.

And then there's Loehmann, the innocent victim of Tamir Rice's unexpected growth spurt. He lost his previous job as a cop in a tiny Cleveland suburb because he couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle on the firing range, and also because he was something of a basket case. Naturally, the Cleveland P.D. didn't bother to check Loehmann's service record before hiring him. Luckily, Rice, who was 5'7" and 175 pounds, managed to become 6'6", 250 right there before Loehmann's eyes. That made him easier to hit, I guess.

Is there any real point in being angry any more? Is there any real point even to be surprised? There certainly is no point in emphasizing the damn irony that Ohio is an "open carry" state so, even if the cops assumed Rice was 18, and they also assumed his gun was real, they had no cause even to stop him, let alone open fire. Listen to the spiel that Wayne LaPierre unspools every time he's in a room with more than four people listening: arm yourselves, because the world is a hellscape of violent Others who are coming for you and your children. At its heart, open carry is about open season on the people who scare you. It's certainly not about an absolute Second Amendment right that applies to black people as well as white. Open carry is about You and the Others, and so is the training of our modern, militarized police forces. If only Tamir Rice had not been born with that congenital ability to become huge and threatening the way he did in the mind of Timothy Loehmann. If only…