CLEVELAND, Ohio – The position of the union that represented the Cleveland police officers involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice would come as no surprise to anyone who follows police misconduct across America.

The officers did nothing wrong.

Tamir didn’t look like a 12-year-old boy.

The shooting was justified.

What was difficult to imagine was that the man who became head of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association shortly after Tamir’s death would lead an effort that would see the union make its first-ever presidential endorsement and grant him audience to then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.

Current CPPA head Jeff Follmer is now in his second stint as the union head, but the man who became the face of the union and Cleveland police’s loudest voice in the wake of Tamir’s death in November 2014 was a boisterous, long-time detective named Steve Loomis.

Follmer, who declined multiple requests for comment on this story, was voted out as union president in the months before Tamir’s death, but his term didn’t end until shortly after the boy died. Follmer’s brief stint on the national platform after the Tamir shooting was not without controversy.

He made several TV appearances and made the false claim on MSNBC less than three weeks after the shooting that the officers had been cleared of any wrongdoing. A grand jury wouldn’t clear the officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback of criminal wrongdoing for more than a year. A citizen review panel more than two years later found the officers did not violate any police policy or procedure.

Follmer garnered the most criticism when he lashed out at then-Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a “Justice for Tamir Rice” shirt during pre-game warm-ups a month after the shooting and called for Hawkins to apologize.

Hawkins refused and delivered an emotional response to the criticism. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart weighed in days later, showing news coverage of the 58-page U.S. Justice Department investigation that found a pattern of Cleveland police using excessive force.

“I guess the only difference is when football players use excessive force, they get penalized," Stewart said.

When Loomis took over as head of the union at the beginning of 2015, he embarked on a years-long defense of Loehmann, Garmback and the police department. He made dozens of appearances on cable news -- mostly on conservative outlets like Fox News -- defending both Cleveland police and officers around the country as a series of police-involved shootings and the debate over use of force sparked turmoil through the U.S.

Loomis, who declined to comment for this story, made headlines when he told Politico Magazine that Tamir was “in the wrong” when he got shot.

“He’s menacing. He’s 5-feet-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures...,” Loomis told the magazine. “The guy with the gun is not running. He’s walking toward us. He’s squaring off with Cleveland police and he has a gun.”

That fed a narrative that persists in some corners of the the internet five years after the shooting.

Less than two years after the shooting, Loomis sat in a prominent place behind then-candidate Trump during an Aug. 22, 2016 speech at the University of Akron. Later that fall, Loomis would appear at another Trump event, this time, a Sept. 5, 2016, roundtable discussion with other local labor leaders at an American Legion hall in Brook Park.

The Associated Press reported that “Loomis, citing what he called ‘the false narrative’ of Black Lives Matter, asked whether Trump would support law enforcement.” Trump answered, “You’re going to have a friend in the White House,” the report said.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and I deal with politicians, and I know they spend their entire life trying to flim flam people, trying to come up with what people want to hear in certain circumstances, especially during an election,” Loomis would later tell cleveland.com of his one conversation with Trump. “I didn’t get that from him. This man looked you in the eye and answered your question.”

Within a little more than a week, the union's board of directors decided to ask members to vote whether to endorse Trump. It did. By Sept. 16, 2016, the nation's largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, endorsed Trump as its preferred candidate.

His early support garnered Loomis an invite at one of Trump’s inaugural ball.

Trump was seen a boon for law enforcement that grew weary of the Obama-era Justice Department’s drive to reform police departments through the use of consent decrees. Cleveland’s police department came under such a federally-driven reform effort hastened by Tamir’s death, but after decades of evidence showed that Cleveland police officers participated in unconstitutional policing practices that left a wake of injured citizens whose civil rights were violated.

Though unable to do much about the city of Cleveland’s May 2015 agreement to clean up its police force, Loomis became a vocal critic of the reform efforts using every opportunity to say it would put his officers in harm’s way.

Loomis continued to subject himself to criticism in an April 25, 2016 statement released hours after the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Tamir’s family for $6 million. “We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms,” Loomis said.

The statement was met with anger by Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice and NAACP President James Hardiman, who said the statement was one more example of the poor relationship between the police and community.

“I don’t understand how he [Loomis] can sleep at night, not doing the right thing,” Samaria Rice said during a June 2015 protest following the article’s publication.

The union under both Loomis and Follmer continued fighting for Loehmann’s job. Loehmann was fired not for the shooting, but for lying on his police application. He failed to mention that he had been allowed to resign from Independence police after a series of incidents where supervisors determined he was unfit to be a police officer, including an emotional breakdown on a gun range.

Loomis targeted the police and city administration, arguing that Loehmann’s firing was motivated by politics.

Some officers grew weary about Loomis’ outspoken nature following his continued support of Trump and his public comments criticizing Cleveland Browns players who chose to kneel during the National Anthem to protest police violence.

The 200-member Cleveland's Black Shield Association represents black police officers on the force. Loomis’ rhetoric rankled some Black Shield officers, according to an interview with then-Black Shield head Lynn Hampton.

Hampton also said several officers expressed private reservations about Loomis leading the campaign to have the union endorse Trump in the 2016 election. He also said that Follmer acknowledged some of the missteps he made during his first tenure as union president, including Hawkins “pathetic” for wearing the “Justice for Tamir” shirt the pregame warm-ups.

Follmer won reelection as union president in late 2017.

After Follmer’s re-election as union president, he continued defending Loehmann but has made no incendiary comments about the case. When an arbitrator ruled that the city was justified in Loehmann’s firing, Follmer stuck to an argument criticizing what he believed to be the arbitrator’s inconsistent ruling in the case.

When Samaria Rice showed up at the union hall in June 2019 with more than 170,000 signatures, she collected on a petition asking Follmer to drop the union’s legal challenge of the arbitrator’s ruling, Follmer made little public comment and had union officials collect the signatures from Samaria Rice and her organization.

The union is still fighting for Loehmann’s job. Both the city and union are awaiting a ruling by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Russo on the case.

The Trump Administration has all but abandoned efforts to carry out police reform throughout America.

While Cleveland’s and other cities’ existing consent decrees are not impacted by the decision, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions took steps to limit the Justice Department’s ability to oversee problem police departments as he left the office in November 2018.

Current Attorney General William Barr gave a controversial speech in August before the national Fraternal Order of Police that hued more toward the approach to criminal justice of the late 1980s when he served in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George H.W. Bush. The speech echoed Loomis, Trump and Sessions before him in decrying "social-justice warriors’ and prosecutors who are soft on crime.