CHICAGO -- A Chicago nonprofit today is set to dedicate the reconstructed gazebo where a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November 2014.
The Rebuild Foundation, a nonprofit founded by artist Theaster Gates, will unveil the gazebo during a ceremony slated to begin at 2 p.m., Central time, Sunday outside its Stony Island Arts Bank.
Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, will be in attendance for the ceremony. She told cleveland.com on Thursday that she’s grateful the gazebo will be rebuilt and displayed in time for what would have been her son’s 17th birthday on June 25.
Construction crews disassembled the gazebo in Cudell Park over two days in September 2016. Workers in neon green vests, hardhats and work gloves delicately handled stuffed animals, dried flowers, glass candles and handmade signs that for two years occupied the space underneath the gazebo, where Tamir took some of the last steps of his life.
The structure came to be a landmark symbolizing police brutality in a city with a history of officers using excessive force.
Officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback initially responded to a 911 call about a "guy with a gun,” but 12-year-old Tamir turned out to be holding a pellet gun.
Garmback drove a police cruiser within feet of the gazebo where Tamir was sitting, slamming on the brakes as the boy approached the car’s passenger door, where Loehmann, a rookie cop, was sitting.
Loehmann opened his door, hopped out of the car and opened fire on the boy in a matter of seconds.
The entire incident was captured on the park’s surveillance cameras.
Tamir’s killing came amid a series of deaths at the hands of police that had galvanized communities across the county. Dozens of protesters took to the streets and locked arms to block traffic in the months that followed the shooting and Tamir’s name began to be uttered alongside those of other black men killed by white police officers.
Less than two weeks after the shooting, the Department of Justice released a 58-page report detailing years of excessive force dolled out by Cleveland’s police officers, and announced that it had reached a settlement agreement known as a consent decree with the city to institute department-wide reforms and allow an independent monitoring team to monitor its process.
Cleveland Browns defender Andrew Hawkins that same month donned a T-shirt proclaiming “Justice for Tamir Rice” before a home game. Jeffrey Follmer, the president of the union that represents rank-and-file officers including Loehmann and Garmback, responded by calling the move “pathetic” and saying that Hawkins should stick to what he knows on the field.
Steve Loomis, Follmer’s successor as head of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, later would call for a boycott of his officers working security at FirstEnergy Stadium after several players knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
Then-Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty’s office oversaw a months-long grand jury inquiry in 2015. McGinty’s prosecutors presented the results of an investigation carried out by the county sheriff’s department and reports from three use-of-force experts, each of whom concluded the shooting was objectionable reasonable under the circumstances.
Lawyers for the boy’s family hired to represent them in a wrongful death lawsuit publicly decried the process and hired their own experts who found the shooting was not justified. McGinty’s office called those experts to testify before the grand jury and, after they emerged, Chandra accused the prosecutors of disrespecting them.
The grand jury ultimately declined to indict the two officers in connection with the shooting, spurring protests and demonstrations downtown and outside McGinty’s home in the city’s West Park neighborhood.
The non-indictment became a flash-point in McGinty’s re-election bid. His challenger, Michael O’Malley, ultimately prevailed after pledging during the campaign to pass every police-use-of-force case to an outside prosecutor.
O’Malley defeated McGinty in the March 2016 primary and ran unopposed in that year’s general election. No police officer has been indicted in connection with a use-of-force incident since O’Malley took office.
The city of Cleveland later paid $6 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Tamir’s family.
The city of Cleveland later fired Loehmann -- not for shooting Tamir, but for lying on his application to the police department. News reports showed that Loehmann did not disclose on his application that he was on the verge of being fired when he quit his previous job at the Independence Police Department. A supervisor there had written at the end of 2012 that Loehmann was distracted and weepy during a firearms training session.
“I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,” the supervisor wrote in the letter.
Loehmann challenged his firing, but lost his arbitration in December. The police union, now led by Follmer again, filed an appeal of that ruling in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. The case is currently before Judge Joseph D. Russo.
Samaria Rice last month delivered a petition signed by more than 150,000 people demanding that Follmer and the union drop their appeal.