Attorneys for Tamir Rice’s family are “cautiously optimistic” about the news that the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department will handle the investigation into the fatal police shooting of the 12-year-old boy, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. After weeks of calls for an outside probe of the death, the city of Cleveland announced that police will turn over the investigation to the sheriff. The attorneys said, “the Rice family hopes that this investigation yields information about why Cleveland Police failed to conduct a background check with the Independence Police Department before hiring Officer Timothy Loehmann. We are further hopeful that this independent investigation will shed some light on why the police car nearly drove on top of Tamir Rice, and why he was shot less than two seconds after officers converged.”
Mayor Frank Jackson said the decision 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.