TIMOTHY LOEHMANN

A Michigan police officer has been charged with second-degree murder for fatally shooting Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head as the Black man was on the ground.

The Justice Department says it will not reopen the federal investigation into the 2014 death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot to death by Cleveland police.

A suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she confused her handgun for a Taser was led away in handcuffs Thursday after a jury found her guilty of manslaughter in the death of Black motorist Daunte Wright.

The family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was fatally shot by Cleveland police in 2014, is asking the Justice Department to reopen the case into his death after it was closed near the end of the Trump administration.

To bring federal civil rights charges in cases like these, the Justice Department must prove that an officer’s actions willfully broke the law and are not simply the result of a mistake, negligence or bad judgment. But the video reviewed by federal prosecutors makes the sequence of events less clear. Neither of two witnesses who either saw part of the encounter or reported hearing gunshots said they saw exactly what Rice was doing just before the shooting, according to the Justice Department. In a statement at the scene to three other law enforcement officers, Loehmann “repeatedly and consistently stated” that Tamir was reaching for a gun before he shot him, prosecutors said. Both Loehmann and Garmback also said in statements after the shooting that Loehmann had given Tamir “multiple commands to show his hands before shooting” and both officers saw him reaching for the weapon.

To bring federal civil rights charges in cases like these, the Justice Department must prove that an officer’s actions willfully broke the law and are not simply the result of a mistake, negligence or bad judgment. But the video reviewed by federal prosecutors makes the sequence of events less clear. Neither of two witnesses who either saw part of the encounter or reported hearing gunshots said they saw exactly what Rice was doing just before the shooting, according to the Justice Department. In a statement at the scene to three other law enforcement officers, Loehmann “repeatedly and consistently stated” that Tamir was reaching for a gun before he shot him, prosecutors said. Both Loehmann and Garmback also said in statements after the shooting that Loehmann had given Tamir “multiple commands to show his hands before shooting” and both officers saw him reaching for the weapon.