Officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice fired from West Virginia ranger position
Timothy Loehmann’s firing is fourth known time in seven years that he left a department following public backlash
Associated Press
Sun 21 Dec 2025 12.34 EST
The former Cleveland officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was fired from his post as a ranger at a West Virginia resort community, the fourth known time in seven years that he left a small department following public backlash.
The fourth KNOWN time....and there WILL be a fifth. Or he'll join ICE. Or both.
Which is honestly why they need licensing requirements. Lose your license because you were fired? Great now you can never work in law enforcement again.
They should be forced carry personal liability insurance. Just like doctors are required to carry malpractice insurance.
You have too many incidents that require your insurance policy to cover (ie instead of settlements at taxpayer expense, insurance pays out) then you lose coverage or it becomes onerously expensive. You do this enough, no carrier will insure you. Boom! You are no longer employable as law enforcement anywhere.
Ideally it would be a federal law for all LE agencies within a state to require it.
I'm all for making them carry personal insurance...
But I'm not sure it'd cause the cultural shift we want. There still exists perverse incentive upon prosecutors to collaborate with cops. Like, their career success is defined by working smoothly with the police - so how can we expect them to nail a bad cop to the wall?
Sure if the cop has got actual criminal convictions that would be even worse but if an insurer sees you've been fired from police forces before and you generate a lot of accusations of misconduct against you the rates to insure you are going to go way up anyway and that would make you unemployable without a prosecutor needing to do anything.
My malpractice insurance applications always ask if I've been fired or sued before. I even have to document and "explain" the time that I was laid off by a failing firm because my contracted salary became too high for their goals.
I would have zero pity at all for cops who had to do the same basic thing.
The most dangerous thing I ever handle is a signature. Why am I held to so much higher a standard of accountability than people who routinely wield lethal force?
Sure, but we can't fix literally everything simultaneously. Let's tackle this issue first, and then we can start workin' out the issues with prosecutors and their relationship with police.
Hell, with police being forced to act right it could inadvertently start fixing that relationship for us. If cops are startin' to say " no I won't say that in court " to prosecutors looking for easy deals/testimony it might do a lot of good for everything else.
How much would you imagine a starting premium be? Would this mean a flat pay raise across the board for LEO, to be able to afford this kind of insurance? I see Drs usually spend 4-12k a year on malpractice but they also make approximately 5x how much the average officer makes.
$2m in liability insurance costs somewhere between $500 and $3000 per year: doctors spend more than that, because $2m doesn't really cover much in healthcare and it's a very high risk environment.
Cops would likely have substantially lower liability costs: much of their activity would not need to be covered under their policy, as typical incidents would be covered under departmental or city policies, and their day-to-day risk is probably lower.
Most doctors will lose a patient; I don't think most police officers have shot a person, but I don't have the statistics.
So, no, I wouldn't expect a large pay rise to be required.
The percentage of officers who are ever involved in a shooting is pretty low. I don't have a proper stat either, but it's a single digit percentage if it's even an integer.
One of the barriers to this right now is the federal legal doctrine of qualified immunity, though. At least theoretically, it's very hard to sue a cop or department in general. The law is set up to generally protect them from liability for "ordinary" mistakes up to and including lethal ones. When they are found liable, it's seldom billed to them personally. This is morally wrong in my opinion, but I understand the legal reasoning behind it. There's a public policy argument that basically goes, if the doctrine of qualified immunity were eliminated, nobody would want to be a cop and we would have a shortage of candidates, salaries would have to go way up, etc. I understand the points of this argument but I don't think it holds up at all. Exhibit one is the fact that despite malpractice insurance being a cost we have to bear, society doesn't yet face a major shortage of lawyers. In medicine, however, we have seen liability insurance costs lead to shortages of providers in certain areas, and rising costs of training have also led to shortages of providers. However, a lot of those shortages ultimately come down to corporate profit, and corporate hospitals and insurers just refusing to pay doctors fairly, not the general principle that insurance requirements deter employment.
Departments can provide a flat stipend equal to an average insurance cost. Good cops will wind up with a raise if their insurance is cheaper, and bad cops will eventually get priced out of the job.
Police officers are government workers. They are not professionals that own businesses.
There will no effect on LEOs. Most local governments already carry some liability insurance . Often there is no liability to pay as government workers generally and police officers particularly enjoy broad immunity from claims.
Most physicians don't pay their own malpractice insurance, it's paid by their employer. Many big hospital systems (Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, etc) actually have their own malpractice insurance companies in-house. Most government-employed physicians (VA for example) are essentially immune from being sued because of qualified immunity. The only physicians who pay their own malpractice are private practice and independent contractors, and those are becoming increasingly rare at least in part due to the cost of malpractice insurance.
As a physician, I used to think malpractice insurance was the solution to shitty police officers moving from job to job, but as others have pointed out it doesn't work without ending qualified immunity, which isn't going to happen. I'm also skeptical of licensure because the licensing body is going to quickly be politicized and will be heavily incentivized to let things slide.
Why isn't it going to happen? We COULD push for it if we care about it. And we shouldn't stop trying just because some people won't like it, or because it's hard to do, or because it's unlikely to get done soon.
Correct, professional liability coverage is provided by the employer.
If a professional commits malpractice, it gets more expensive to employ them. If it becomes routine, eventually they can't get insurance at all, and they can't practice their profession anymore.
So if cops had to have malpractice insurance, the shitty ones would find it increasingly difficult to find employment, and after X number of incidents they would no longer be able to be a police officer.
The problem with that (I am not against the idea, just seeing an issue), is that a lot of police nationally don't get paid enough to make that happen. Yes, there are cops making bank. Everyone pulls up the public data showing how some cop with 30 years on is making a quarter million because of overtime and promotions and court appearances. But they all forget that the rookie cop out of academy doesn't pull down that kind of cash. Nationally, the median police wage in the US is $72k/yr, but that gets skewed upward by those vet cops and super rich departments that only have a few officers. 25% of police make less than $60k/year, and 10% make less than $45k/year.
Now, I'm not saying this is a reason to NOT implement such requirements, but it DOES pose a problem. Agencies would have to increase wages/benefits. Which would mean increased budgets. Which would mean increased taxes. Which would mean pushback from the voters. Especially in red areas.
They should be forced carry personal liability insurance. Just like doctors are required to carry malpractice insurance.
Not the magic bullet you imagine. Complex problems are not solved with simple ideas. "Government should be run like a business," they said. How has that worked out?
That's because the government should never be run like a business. They have fundamentally different goals - or ideally should. But you're right complex problems like the bad cop culture doesn't have just a single answer, lots of changes need to happen together to fix it.
lol it’s not a magic bullet, but it would be a start, and at least tax payers would theoretically be off the hook for the settlements these guys end up making us pay out. I’m sure we’d figure some things out along the way, being unprecedented territory.
Many DO carry personal liability insurance through homeowner's insurance and umbrella policies. That doesn't actually change anything, carrying personal liability insurance doesn't suddenly make a public official personally and legally responsible for what they do during the course of their official duties. Liability is codified in law, not insurance policies.
You will be 3 years into it and they stalk you every time you leave your house, they have people at work designated just to make your day shit and lie to you and then play the victim when you say anything about it, and let's not forget the family influence to disown you and put weird substances in your chair at work. At the start of this I thought that I had rights also.
Ohio has a peace officer license that can be revoked usually due to felonies, certain misdemeanors and other non criminal acts but it needs to be the same across state lines. I think a lot of the time it losing the license can be avoided by resigning
Some states do this. Others don't. Ones that do don't necessarily talk bureacratically to anyone else. For example, here in Oregon every officer is liscened through the state with the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. If you get fired for cause, that license is revoked and can only be brought back via gubernatorial intervention or successful lawsuit. If an officer fired in Oregon tries to get hired in Washington, they will be turned away because the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission talks to DPSST. But if they go to Idaho, they are more likely to sneak in because the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training won't talk to either.
They have a report every so often on the result of investigations for DPSST licenses. My favorite was a retired officer losing his retired license status (you get privileges such as being able to still carry) because he got caught over limit while clamming multiple times.
Clamming on the Oregon Coast requires a shellfishing license license, and has limits depending on what you are going for. Example from this year's regs:
Razor clams - First 15 dug, no sorting
Bay clams - 20 of any kind, no more than 12 can be Gaper Clams
Purple Varnish clams - 72
Scallops - 24 and requires special permits
And so on. I spent quite a bit of time in my 20s working for Fish and Wildlife here in Oregon. Learned a lot about fishing and hunting regs, even though that wasn't what I was hired for.
And that licensing should be for everywhere with any kind of physical authority over someone. Get your license revoked for being a bad cop? Can't go to the prison system, or work in any federal role with any kind of law enforcement powers, can't work as a mall cop or security at a corporate building. All of those things should be under the same licensing board and egregiously poor behavior in any one of those occupations should disqualify you from all of them.
Yup. Some sects require a master's degree before they let you into their master's of divinity program, sometimes you just need three ministers to lay their hands on you to be a preacher, and sometimes you don't even need that. And sometimes you pay $10 in the initial round of frenzied 90s internet capitalism and you are bestowed with the lifelong title of Reverend as a teen.
I have a buddy who went through LE training for a local PD and he had to give a fucking spelling test. This is how low of bar there is. I haven’t had a spelling test since middle school
I laughed. I went to a fancy place for undergrad. I had the really tough professor for a literature class everyone had to take. Anyway, we had a spelling/vocab test each week with 30 words on it. Shit was actually really hard. We'd go through the list each week for the next week's test and he'd see who knew the words. Usually only a couple were known by anyone.
Part of the problem here is small towns and rural areas insisting on having their own police department, but not having the tax base to actually support one that does things like "properly vet applicants" or "follow state hiring requirements." Another problem is red states that lower hiring standards, dont fund or inadequately fund state agencies that keep track of cops and the employment status, refuse to talk to other states about such info, and don't pass laws that punish everyone involved when problem cops are hired.
One way we could actually improve policing in the US would be to have a national database of police officers and require EVERY public safety agency to use it in background checks, with harsh punishments for failing to do so. The current haphazard state-by-state system we currently have fails us all.
Agreed, in this case though, it appears that this isn't about him continuing to be a bad cop, it is about continuing public outrage over shooting Tamir Rice.
Part of it is also that they have no other marketable skills. They can't really change careers. And that really says something about the skills (or lack thereof) that cops in this country have.
Honest question: I was aware of this case, but did not follow too closely, as context. Is the killer being implicated in NEW misconduct, or is this his past following him?
Edit: I skimmed the article, looks like related to the shooting. Hopefully, the backlash falls on ICE when they hire this guy.
Timothy Loehmann’s firing is fourth known time in seven years that he left a department
I thought the headline was describing the shooting at first, that it was some technique he used. "What the fuck is the West Virginia Ranger Position, was he resting the grip on a bottle of moonshine?"
He seems bound and determined to get another chance to be a cop. I would not be surprised if he took a position with ICE here soon, they don't have any standards left these days.
Florence PD might also take him. They are rumored in the 2a community for being unable to source a lot of department equipment for deals because they've so often used that to then turn around and resell shit to make a fuckin profit. And I'm aware of at least 6 guys that have joined or attempted to join them specifically so they could shoot people.
He probably literally can’t. Private security wouldn’t hire this guy because he’s a flaming red flag of liability. He probably lacks the technical skills for a trade job, and lacks the people skills to work an office job (not to mention the brains to work either a trade job or an office job). He can only work for the government because lawsuits get paid out by the taxpayers, and can only work a job where violence is permitted (in some circumstances) because violence is his only skill set.
HR managers will Google his name and thats gonna get his application tossed out. Even small companies with no HR wouldnt want to risk controversy by hiring him. If it got out that you hired him, it would cause a shit storm that you're better off avoiding. I'd guarentee he doesnt have any marketable skills to make up for that huge flaw.
Policing is outside the free market and people arent able to vote with their money and he has the experience needed while departments are hard up for officers. They can take that risk that PR hit because let's be realistic, its not going to cause anyone to lose votes. Either people won't care or by the next election they'll forget.
He'll get picked up by some shitty department, get placed on some bullshit assignment with the lowest risk of him fucking up. He'll fuck up again and repeat the cycle.
Pretty sure he's not qualified for anything else. I'm mean he's not qualified to be a "good" cop either, but there's always plenty of jobs available for shitty cops. Plus, what else could he really do?
He wants the rush of killing without losing his freedom again. And he craves a position of power and an intimidating uniform. Probably would rather get fired every year and a half for the rest of his life getting to cosplay big strong man than just find a steady, less public facing job
I think he'd have a brilliant career as a professional prisoner. I'm sure he can have a long and fruitful career at it! Like, 20 years... 40? I dunno, how many life sentences would he get if the justice system worked...?
Last two jobs were in towns with resorts for the wealthy; White Sulphur Springs WV (Greenbrier) and Slaty Fork WV (Snowshoe Resort). I don't know if that means anything.
It means the hiring authorities did not care until it became super clear people were going to make them more miserable about it then they thought.
Like I doubt even Phillipi, which is a quasi-Sundown Town, would hire him because plenty of POC visit it thanks to the damn bridge and mummies. Even if there's a lot of unofficial institutional support for those sorts of people, it invites too much scrutiny from the outside.
Fired from a ranger job. Not charged. Not convicted. This is the 'consequence' for killing a 12-year-old child holding a toy? He gets to move to another state and have a minor career setback. Tamir Rice doesn't get to move or have a career. The math isn't mathing.
It was not a toy. It appeared to be an actual firearm (it was a replica of an actual firearm and INTENDED to look like an actual firearm) and it WAS an airsoft gun which is still not a toy.
It had no markings on it indicating it was a toy (that that that is dispositive of it not being a firearm) and it was a realistic replica of an actual firearm.
It had no markings on it indicating it was a toy (that that that is dispositive of it not being a firearm) and it was a realistic replica of an actual firearm.
Game Wardens encounter armed individuals all the fucking time in the course of their work and they manage not to kill people left, right and center.
Stop repeating copaganda that it's okay to kill people "because they had a gun".
All of which is negated by the fact they drove up on him at such high speed and shot him before the car even stopped which means they didn't realistically even have time to make a determination on what if anything he was holding.
I think some of y'all are giving them way too much credit. They probably read enough of his resume to see he meets their desired qualifications and didn't dig a second past that.
It’s surprising that Tioga even has a police department. It’s a town of 600 with one gas station. It doesn’t even have one stop light like the old trope. I assume the state police must cover it now after he got fired.
While I would love to see this dude serve time and get fired from every job he ever gets, a lot of people in these comments seem to be missing the fact that he keeps getting fired due to public outcry relating to the original shooting in 2014, not due to new offences.
This guy should NOT have a gun, he shouldn't even be allowed to be a security guard with a radio. What he did in the Tamir Rice murder should tell you that this guy does NOT have the judgement to have power over anyone or anything.
Who the hell drives/runs point blank into a person that they think has a gun and is going to shoot them when that person hasn't shot anyone yet. Someone with terrible judgement, that's who (Or someone that knew the guy wasn't real and just wanted to kill someone, which would be another reason that they shouldn't have any power over people.).
Why, what specifically do you think he did wrong? He shot someone with what appeared to be a real gun.
Seriously go through the ACTUAL facts and tell me what you think he did wrong given what was knowable to him at the time he was forced into a decision.
You think the cop shooting a 12 yo less 2 seconds after getting out of a still moving car was the right thing to do?
The dispatcher should've been fired for not putting through all of the information of the caller saying they believed it to be fake and a minor.
And the cop should've lost his ability to be a cop ever again. Coming onto a scene and not being able to see it as a minor first then taking more than a second to survey what's going on, didn't use a tazer even though he was less than 10 ft when he shot him, and no aid was given until an fbi agent arrived 4 mins later.
I know sometimes using lethal force is the best call having witnessed last week one of those times. I saw someone attack a cop stabbing him and his partner shot the guy, but they also started giving him aid within a min of him being cuffed (he still tried kicking at police after being shot).
You think the cop shooting a 12 yo less 2 seconds after getting out of a still moving car was the right thing to do?
The dispatcher should've been fired for not putting through all of the information of the caller saying they believed it to be fake and a minor.
And the cop should've lost his ability to be a cop ever again. Coming onto a scene and not being able to see it as a minor first then taking more than a second to survey what's going on, didn't use a tazer even though he was less than 10 ft when he shot him, and no aid was given until an fbi agent arrived 4 mins later.
I know sometimes using lethal force is the best call having witnessed last week one of those times. I saw someone attack a cop stabbing him and his partner shot the guy, but they also started giving him aid within a min of him being cuffed (he still tried kicking at police after being shot).
You think the cop shooting a 12 yo less 2 seconds after getting out of a still moving car was the right thing to do?
Yes, it appears to have been the correct decision based on the kid having what appeared to be a gun and reaching for it when told to show his hands.
There is no minimum amount of time before you can shoot someone that is making what appears to be a deadly threat against both you and others (which is why the police were called)
The age of the person is irrelevant when they have (what appears to be) a gun.
Is he fired because of that incident or is he making more bad judgement calls?
I didn't want to give them my info so only read the first couple paragraphs.
He needs to be in prison. He murdered a kid in cold blood. He is a danger to society, and utterly unrepentant. I was about a mile away when it happened back in Cleveland, and people were fucking enraged. Then nothing happened.
Timothy Loehmann’s firing is fourth known time in seven years that he left a department following public backlash Associated Press Sun 21 Dec 2025 12.34 EST
The former Cleveland officer who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was fired from his post as a ranger at a West Virginia resort community, the fourth known time in seven years that he left a small department following public backlash.
The fourth KNOWN time....and there WILL be a fifth. Or he'll join ICE. Or both.
This is so common. Bad cops just move to another department and keep on being bad cops.
Which is honestly why they need licensing requirements. Lose your license because you were fired? Great now you can never work in law enforcement again.
They should be forced carry personal liability insurance. Just like doctors are required to carry malpractice insurance.
You have too many incidents that require your insurance policy to cover (ie instead of settlements at taxpayer expense, insurance pays out) then you lose coverage or it becomes onerously expensive. You do this enough, no carrier will insure you. Boom! You are no longer employable as law enforcement anywhere.
Ideally it would be a federal law for all LE agencies within a state to require it.
Watch how fast cops start acting right.
I'm all for making them carry personal insurance...
But I'm not sure it'd cause the cultural shift we want. There still exists perverse incentive upon prosecutors to collaborate with cops. Like, their career success is defined by working smoothly with the police - so how can we expect them to nail a bad cop to the wall?
Sure if the cop has got actual criminal convictions that would be even worse but if an insurer sees you've been fired from police forces before and you generate a lot of accusations of misconduct against you the rates to insure you are going to go way up anyway and that would make you unemployable without a prosecutor needing to do anything.
Yep, in the US you can’t rely on ethics or morality. You have to hit them in their pockets, otherwise shit will never change.
My malpractice insurance applications always ask if I've been fired or sued before. I even have to document and "explain" the time that I was laid off by a failing firm because my contracted salary became too high for their goals.
I would have zero pity at all for cops who had to do the same basic thing.
The most dangerous thing I ever handle is a signature. Why am I held to so much higher a standard of accountability than people who routinely wield lethal force?
Sure, but we can't fix literally everything simultaneously. Let's tackle this issue first, and then we can start workin' out the issues with prosecutors and their relationship with police.
Hell, with police being forced to act right it could inadvertently start fixing that relationship for us. If cops are startin' to say " no I won't say that in court " to prosecutors looking for easy deals/testimony it might do a lot of good for everything else.
And a huge incentive for coverups.
How much would you imagine a starting premium be? Would this mean a flat pay raise across the board for LEO, to be able to afford this kind of insurance? I see Drs usually spend 4-12k a year on malpractice but they also make approximately 5x how much the average officer makes.
$2m in liability insurance costs somewhere between $500 and $3000 per year: doctors spend more than that, because $2m doesn't really cover much in healthcare and it's a very high risk environment.
Cops would likely have substantially lower liability costs: much of their activity would not need to be covered under their policy, as typical incidents would be covered under departmental or city policies, and their day-to-day risk is probably lower.
Most doctors will lose a patient; I don't think most police officers have shot a person, but I don't have the statistics.
So, no, I wouldn't expect a large pay rise to be required.
The percentage of officers who are ever involved in a shooting is pretty low. I don't have a proper stat either, but it's a single digit percentage if it's even an integer.
One of the barriers to this right now is the federal legal doctrine of qualified immunity, though. At least theoretically, it's very hard to sue a cop or department in general. The law is set up to generally protect them from liability for "ordinary" mistakes up to and including lethal ones. When they are found liable, it's seldom billed to them personally. This is morally wrong in my opinion, but I understand the legal reasoning behind it. There's a public policy argument that basically goes, if the doctrine of qualified immunity were eliminated, nobody would want to be a cop and we would have a shortage of candidates, salaries would have to go way up, etc. I understand the points of this argument but I don't think it holds up at all. Exhibit one is the fact that despite malpractice insurance being a cost we have to bear, society doesn't yet face a major shortage of lawyers. In medicine, however, we have seen liability insurance costs lead to shortages of providers in certain areas, and rising costs of training have also led to shortages of providers. However, a lot of those shortages ultimately come down to corporate profit, and corporate hospitals and insurers just refusing to pay doctors fairly, not the general principle that insurance requirements deter employment.
Departments can provide a flat stipend equal to an average insurance cost. Good cops will wind up with a raise if their insurance is cheaper, and bad cops will eventually get priced out of the job.
This doesn’t stop cities from being sued. Also insurance is profitable to private corporations so that’s where you’re sending tax money.
Police officers are government workers. They are not professionals that own businesses.
There will no effect on LEOs. Most local governments already carry some liability insurance . Often there is no liability to pay as government workers generally and police officers particularly enjoy broad immunity from claims.
Well then maybe the Actuaries should start looking at the insurability of officers employed by the government.
They do. Local government liability insurance is priced accordingly.
People acting like insurance agents aren’t bigger criminals than cops
So what? There are doctors and lawyers who work for the government, and they're all covered by professional insurance for malpractice liability.
Most physicians don't pay their own malpractice insurance, it's paid by their employer. Many big hospital systems (Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, etc) actually have their own malpractice insurance companies in-house. Most government-employed physicians (VA for example) are essentially immune from being sued because of qualified immunity. The only physicians who pay their own malpractice are private practice and independent contractors, and those are becoming increasingly rare at least in part due to the cost of malpractice insurance.
As a physician, I used to think malpractice insurance was the solution to shitty police officers moving from job to job, but as others have pointed out it doesn't work without ending qualified immunity, which isn't going to happen. I'm also skeptical of licensure because the licensing body is going to quickly be politicized and will be heavily incentivized to let things slide.
Why isn't it going to happen? We COULD push for it if we care about it. And we shouldn't stop trying just because some people won't like it, or because it's hard to do, or because it's unlikely to get done soon.
That they do not pay.
Correct, professional liability coverage is provided by the employer.
If a professional commits malpractice, it gets more expensive to employ them. If it becomes routine, eventually they can't get insurance at all, and they can't practice their profession anymore.
So if cops had to have malpractice insurance, the shitty ones would find it increasingly difficult to find employment, and after X number of incidents they would no longer be able to be a police officer.
The problem with that (I am not against the idea, just seeing an issue), is that a lot of police nationally don't get paid enough to make that happen. Yes, there are cops making bank. Everyone pulls up the public data showing how some cop with 30 years on is making a quarter million because of overtime and promotions and court appearances. But they all forget that the rookie cop out of academy doesn't pull down that kind of cash. Nationally, the median police wage in the US is $72k/yr, but that gets skewed upward by those vet cops and super rich departments that only have a few officers. 25% of police make less than $60k/year, and 10% make less than $45k/year.
Now, I'm not saying this is a reason to NOT implement such requirements, but it DOES pose a problem. Agencies would have to increase wages/benefits. Which would mean increased budgets. Which would mean increased taxes. Which would mean pushback from the voters. Especially in red areas.
Why can't this shit be easy?
Not the magic bullet you imagine. Complex problems are not solved with simple ideas. "Government should be run like a business," they said. How has that worked out?
That's because the government should never be run like a business. They have fundamentally different goals - or ideally should. But you're right complex problems like the bad cop culture doesn't have just a single answer, lots of changes need to happen together to fix it.
lol it’s not a magic bullet, but it would be a start, and at least tax payers would theoretically be off the hook for the settlements these guys end up making us pay out. I’m sure we’d figure some things out along the way, being unprecedented territory.
But it’s a start.
Many DO carry personal liability insurance through homeowner's insurance and umbrella policies. That doesn't actually change anything, carrying personal liability insurance doesn't suddenly make a public official personally and legally responsible for what they do during the course of their official duties. Liability is codified in law, not insurance policies.
🤬 How can you expect the cops to their job if they can't break the law or use excessive force?!
Careful you will get the thin line cult after you if you speak resolutions too loud.
I’m shaking in my boots.
You will be 3 years into it and they stalk you every time you leave your house, they have people at work designated just to make your day shit and lie to you and then play the victim when you say anything about it, and let's not forget the family influence to disown you and put weird substances in your chair at work. At the start of this I thought that I had rights also.
I’m sorry you’re going through this.
I’m an old lady yelling at clouds. I doubt they clock me as a threat.
Ohio has a peace officer license that can be revoked usually due to felonies, certain misdemeanors and other non criminal acts but it needs to be the same across state lines. I think a lot of the time it losing the license can be avoided by resigning
Some states do this. Others don't. Ones that do don't necessarily talk bureacratically to anyone else. For example, here in Oregon every officer is liscened through the state with the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. If you get fired for cause, that license is revoked and can only be brought back via gubernatorial intervention or successful lawsuit. If an officer fired in Oregon tries to get hired in Washington, they will be turned away because the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission talks to DPSST. But if they go to Idaho, they are more likely to sneak in because the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training won't talk to either.
They have a report every so often on the result of investigations for DPSST licenses. My favorite was a retired officer losing his retired license status (you get privileges such as being able to still carry) because he got caught over limit while clamming multiple times.
What limit was he over while clamming (I assume that's fishing for clams and not some kind of euphemism?)?
Clamming on the Oregon Coast requires a shellfishing license license, and has limits depending on what you are going for. Example from this year's regs:
Razor clams - First 15 dug, no sorting
Bay clams - 20 of any kind, no more than 12 can be Gaper Clams
Purple Varnish clams - 72
Scallops - 24 and requires special permits
And so on. I spent quite a bit of time in my 20s working for Fish and Wildlife here in Oregon. Learned a lot about fishing and hunting regs, even though that wasn't what I was hired for.
ahhh
I thought it was something like drunk while hunting for clams or something like that
Lol, how else would one find slogging through tidal flats in the rain enjoyable?
And that licensing should be for everywhere with any kind of physical authority over someone. Get your license revoked for being a bad cop? Can't go to the prison system, or work in any federal role with any kind of law enforcement powers, can't work as a mall cop or security at a corporate building. All of those things should be under the same licensing board and egregiously poor behavior in any one of those occupations should disqualify you from all of them.
This. We make fucking hairdressers maintain professional licenses.
Good luck in getting police unions to agree to that
Could he maybe become a priest?
No, they actually have to study to qualify for their positions, vs cops who don't.
He could be an evangelical preacher though.
Yup. Some sects require a master's degree before they let you into their master's of divinity program, sometimes you just need three ministers to lay their hands on you to be a preacher, and sometimes you don't even need that. And sometimes you pay $10 in the initial round of frenzied 90s internet capitalism and you are bestowed with the lifelong title of Reverend as a teen.
Pretty sure they at least have to prove they've molested a child.
This thread is gold. Preach the truth
And priests can read
Debatable if we're talking about evangelical priests
My uncle-in-law was illiterate and a preacher.
I have a buddy who went through LE training for a local PD and he had to give a fucking spelling test. This is how low of bar there is. I haven’t had a spelling test since middle school
I laughed. I went to a fancy place for undergrad. I had the really tough professor for a literature class everyone had to take. Anyway, we had a spelling/vocab test each week with 30 words on it. Shit was actually really hard. We'd go through the list each week for the next week's test and he'd see who knew the words. Usually only a couple were known by anyone.
Different way of shooting kids in that line of work
Part of the problem here is small towns and rural areas insisting on having their own police department, but not having the tax base to actually support one that does things like "properly vet applicants" or "follow state hiring requirements." Another problem is red states that lower hiring standards, dont fund or inadequately fund state agencies that keep track of cops and the employment status, refuse to talk to other states about such info, and don't pass laws that punish everyone involved when problem cops are hired.
One way we could actually improve policing in the US would be to have a national database of police officers and require EVERY public safety agency to use it in background checks, with harsh punishments for failing to do so. The current haphazard state-by-state system we currently have fails us all.
Agreed, in this case though, it appears that this isn't about him continuing to be a bad cop, it is about continuing public outrage over shooting Tamir Rice.
Ex-SAPD officer fired for giving homeless man a feces sandwich hired by Benavides Police Department
it's almost like it's all bad cops
What gets me is that this isn't just any other bad cop, he's an infamous and well known bad cop.
It's like hiring Michael Vick at a dog kennel.
Part of it is also that they have no other marketable skills. They can't really change careers. And that really says something about the skills (or lack thereof) that cops in this country have.
They could do unskilled labor, or retrain, like many other people. Would suck, yes. Getting shot by a cop also sucks.
Albuquerque PD is where a lot of them end up
Land of Entrapment
Nah, they just shoot you.
Surprised he wasn't already in ICE. Someone surely will start a gofundme for him to grift while he waits for that $50k signing bonus.
He was hired a couple years ago in the small town next to mine, then let go as soon as his swearing in became public and the town held protests.
ICE would trip over themselves to have him. They'll make him a commander (or some shit, I don't know what their gestapo ranks are)
Grand Dragon probably, Exalted Cyclops maybe.
Honest question: I was aware of this case, but did not follow too closely, as context. Is the killer being implicated in NEW misconduct, or is this his past following him?
Edit: I skimmed the article, looks like related to the shooting. Hopefully, the backlash falls on ICE when they hire this guy.
This is why police officers need an equivalent of a doctor's malpractice insurance.
Keep having incidents? Your premiums go up and up until eventually no precinct could afford to hire you even if they wanted to.
I can’t believe that was already over ten years ago.
If the punishment is "get a new job somewhere else" what got you fired is implicitly approved.
I thought the headline was describing the shooting at first, that it was some technique he used. "What the fuck is the West Virginia Ranger Position, was he resting the grip on a bottle of moonshine?"
Jesus. Just enter a different field bro.
He seems bound and determined to get another chance to be a cop. I would not be surprised if he took a position with ICE here soon, they don't have any standards left these days.
Florence PD might also take him. They are rumored in the 2a community for being unable to source a lot of department equipment for deals because they've so often used that to then turn around and resell shit to make a fuckin profit. And I'm aware of at least 6 guys that have joined or attempted to join them specifically so they could shoot people.
These days?
Eh, ICE under Obama and Biden deported lots of people but actually let people go through court.
Which is what they should be doing. If you are here illegally you are subject to being deported, but only after a fair process.
The Rice lawyer said it well. "He seems determined to inflict himself on others."
He probably literally can’t. Private security wouldn’t hire this guy because he’s a flaming red flag of liability. He probably lacks the technical skills for a trade job, and lacks the people skills to work an office job (not to mention the brains to work either a trade job or an office job). He can only work for the government because lawsuits get paid out by the taxpayers, and can only work a job where violence is permitted (in some circumstances) because violence is his only skill set.
What company would hire him?
HR managers will Google his name and thats gonna get his application tossed out. Even small companies with no HR wouldnt want to risk controversy by hiring him. If it got out that you hired him, it would cause a shit storm that you're better off avoiding. I'd guarentee he doesnt have any marketable skills to make up for that huge flaw.
Policing is outside the free market and people arent able to vote with their money and he has the experience needed while departments are hard up for officers. They can take that risk that PR hit because let's be realistic, its not going to cause anyone to lose votes. Either people won't care or by the next election they'll forget.
He'll get picked up by some shitty department, get placed on some bullshit assignment with the lowest risk of him fucking up. He'll fuck up again and repeat the cycle.
Nah, gonna join ICE where public backlash doesn't matter.
Plenty of work in trumps government for lawless racists.
Kinda shocked he hasn’t gone to work for ICE.
Pretty sure he's not qualified for anything else. I'm mean he's not qualified to be a "good" cop either, but there's always plenty of jobs available for shitty cops. Plus, what else could he really do?
He won't be able to get away with shooting children in most other jobs.
He wants the rush of killing without losing his freedom again. And he craves a position of power and an intimidating uniform. Probably would rather get fired every year and a half for the rest of his life getting to cosplay big strong man than just find a steady, less public facing job
Where else can he kill minorities without major repercussions?
ICE or an ICE detention center.
I think he'd have a brilliant career as a professional prisoner. I'm sure he can have a long and fruitful career at it! Like, 20 years... 40? I dunno, how many life sentences would he get if the justice system worked...?
Seems like he’s qualified for a hit man.
He’ll be sloppy AF, but he’s cold blooded like that.
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Yep. He got fired for being unfit by a suburban Cleveland police department. He hid that as he applied and was hired by Cleveland.
Last two jobs were in towns with resorts for the wealthy; White Sulphur Springs WV (Greenbrier) and Slaty Fork WV (Snowshoe Resort). I don't know if that means anything.
It means the hiring authorities did not care until it became super clear people were going to make them more miserable about it then they thought.
Like I doubt even Phillipi, which is a quasi-Sundown Town, would hire him because plenty of POC visit it thanks to the damn bridge and mummies. Even if there's a lot of unofficial institutional support for those sorts of people, it invites too much scrutiny from the outside.
So, this guy should absolutely not be a cop. He has no business in law enforcement.
That being said, the article indicates that he was fired due to public backlash from his hiring, not because he committed another act of violence.
I'm fine with the public holding their department for bad decisions like hiring a violent sociopath.
Good on the public. I wouldn’t want him policing my neighborhood either.
Fired from a ranger job. Not charged. Not convicted. This is the 'consequence' for killing a 12-year-old child holding a toy? He gets to move to another state and have a minor career setback. Tamir Rice doesn't get to move or have a career. The math isn't mathing.
It was not a toy. It appeared to be an actual firearm (it was a replica of an actual firearm and INTENDED to look like an actual firearm) and it WAS an airsoft gun which is still not a toy.
It had no markings on it indicating it was a toy (that that that is dispositive of it not being a firearm) and it was a realistic replica of an actual firearm.
Game Wardens encounter armed individuals all the fucking time in the course of their work and they manage not to kill people left, right and center.
Stop repeating copaganda that it's okay to kill people "because they had a gun".
Tamir was dead in like 2 seconds after this shitbag stopped his car. He never even gave him a chance to drop it. Just straight to execution.
Just to be clear, Tamir was shot dead before the car finished rolling to a stop. It was a definitive “shoot first, ask questions later” execution.
Remember folks if you see a literal child holding what “looks” like a gun just shoot them dead immediately.
All of which is negated by the fact they drove up on him at such high speed and shot him before the car even stopped which means they didn't realistically even have time to make a determination on what if anything he was holding.
You don't get to shoot children for simply holding something that looks like a gun.
When you invent a way for police to read your mind, and know if the gun is real or not from afar, let me know.
Wow if only the police could ask question first then shoot but no clearly the only option was to pull up and immediately shoot a child
How about remove his credentials?
It's crazy these places don't have problems hiring him. Only until the mother brings attention to the shit bag do they reconsider.
I think some of y'all are giving them way too much credit. They probably read enough of his resume to see he meets their desired qualifications and didn't dig a second past that.
I’m sure ICE will hire him next
Hell, he's their ideal candidate.
Murderous asshat should be unemployable.
On to another department 🤬🤬🤬🤬
Huzzah to all the people who use their time and effort to hound him to the ends of the earth
Out of a cannon, into the sun, hopefully
So only too 11 damn years?!
That was 12 years ago???
LMAO! Stop!
Guess he was just one bad apple in a barrel with no other apples
It’s surprising that Tioga even has a police department. It’s a town of 600 with one gas station. It doesn’t even have one stop light like the old trope. I assume the state police must cover it now after he got fired.
While I would love to see this dude serve time and get fired from every job he ever gets, a lot of people in these comments seem to be missing the fact that he keeps getting fired due to public outcry relating to the original shooting in 2014, not due to new offences.
As he should.
Said what I was going to say.
This guy should NOT have a gun, he shouldn't even be allowed to be a security guard with a radio. What he did in the Tamir Rice murder should tell you that this guy does NOT have the judgement to have power over anyone or anything.
Who the hell drives/runs point blank into a person that they think has a gun and is going to shoot them when that person hasn't shot anyone yet. Someone with terrible judgement, that's who (Or someone that knew the guy wasn't real and just wanted to kill someone, which would be another reason that they shouldn't have any power over people.).
Why, what specifically do you think he did wrong? He shot someone with what appeared to be a real gun.
Seriously go through the ACTUAL facts and tell me what you think he did wrong given what was knowable to him at the time he was forced into a decision.
You think the cop shooting a 12 yo less 2 seconds after getting out of a still moving car was the right thing to do?
The dispatcher should've been fired for not putting through all of the information of the caller saying they believed it to be fake and a minor.
And the cop should've lost his ability to be a cop ever again. Coming onto a scene and not being able to see it as a minor first then taking more than a second to survey what's going on, didn't use a tazer even though he was less than 10 ft when he shot him, and no aid was given until an fbi agent arrived 4 mins later.
I know sometimes using lethal force is the best call having witnessed last week one of those times. I saw someone attack a cop stabbing him and his partner shot the guy, but they also started giving him aid within a min of him being cuffed (he still tried kicking at police after being shot).
You think the cop shooting a 12 yo less 2 seconds after getting out of a still moving car was the right thing to do?
The dispatcher should've been fired for not putting through all of the information of the caller saying they believed it to be fake and a minor.
And the cop should've lost his ability to be a cop ever again. Coming onto a scene and not being able to see it as a minor first then taking more than a second to survey what's going on, didn't use a tazer even though he was less than 10 ft when he shot him, and no aid was given until an fbi agent arrived 4 mins later.
I know sometimes using lethal force is the best call having witnessed last week one of those times. I saw someone attack a cop stabbing him and his partner shot the guy, but they also started giving him aid within a min of him being cuffed (he still tried kicking at police after being shot).
Yes, it appears to have been the correct decision based on the kid having what appeared to be a gun and reaching for it when told to show his hands.
There is no minimum amount of time before you can shoot someone that is making what appears to be a deadly threat against both you and others (which is why the police were called)
The age of the person is irrelevant when they have (what appears to be) a gun.
Here's the report on the situation: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-closing-investigation-2014-officer-involved-shooting-cleveland
Here's the prosecutor talking about the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XREFEgT-tQQ
he should be fired out of a cannon into the sun
good. i hope he is never gainfully employed.
'Fired from ranger position' is an odd way of saying 'still not in prison'
He appears to be a perfect fit for ICE. Although they appear to favour batons and pepper spray. I'm sure he could adjust though.
Probably already has a job lined up one county over.
Cop interviews must either be the dumbest shit on the planet or the most fuckin evil.
Kristi Noem must be waiting outside his door with a gift basket.
Is he fired because of that incident or is he making more bad judgement calls?
I didn't want to give them my info so only read the first couple paragraphs.
He was fired due to public outcry.
Basically, every where he goes, the residents of that community flip the fuck out, because he has absolutely no business being in law enforcement.
Which is the correct response.
Thanks. I agree.
He’s going to join ICE where he can continue to terrorize anyone he wants to.
Good. I want him to be unemployable in every profession
The man needs to know his place. He's never gonna secure a public service/ranger/emergency service job ever again.
Better to get a trade imo.
He needs to be in prison. He murdered a kid in cold blood. He is a danger to society, and utterly unrepentant. I was about a mile away when it happened back in Cleveland, and people were fucking enraged. Then nothing happened.
It really bugs me that there are people out there that defend this vile cop.
How? The internet exists. What the hell is the excuse for hiring this sick motherfucker?