Tamir's family calls legal filing by city disrespectful 3-line drop goes here and here and here

Tamir Rice.

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

The five-month investigation by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department into last November's deadly Cleveland police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice was thorough and detailed -- yet it also defines heartbreak.

The exhaustive 224-page assembly of investigative reports, interview transcripts, and other documentation records a litany of human frailty: adolescent stupidity, adult fallibility, miscommunication, missed opportunities, fear and - finally - an act of kindness.

The investigators' hard work was compromised, however, by the failure of the key players to cooperate. The shooter, Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback, declined to be interviewed on the advice of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, according to the report. Also declining to provide critical details was Dispatcher Constance Hollinger, who took the 911 call, on the advice of her attorney.

Although the officers have understandable concerns about possible criminal prosecution, that was still wrong. The officers and the call-taker had a duty to cooperate in this investigation.

Their failure to offer their perspectives leaves the investigative report without a needed dimension - particularly given continued uncertainties highlighted in the report about the sequence of events, notably as to whether Loehmann issued any warning to Tamir prior to opening fire. At least one witness quoted in the report said she heard shots fired before Loehmann told Tamir to show his hands.

The investigation reveals other chilling details about Tamir's last moments and the severity of his wounds, and it uncovers disturbing issues relating to procedures in Cleveland's handling of 911 calls and a seeming lack of Cleveland police interface with a police officer working off-duty at the Cudell Recreation Center, where the shooting occurred.

The investigators reach no conclusions - rightly - about possible criminality on the part of Loehmann and Garmback. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty has already said he will be taking this case to the grand jury.

The tone is professional - just the facts. The mantra repeated several times throughout the report is that "the investigative team has not, and will not, render any opinion of the legality of the officers' actions."

The sheriff's deputies who conducted the investigation were diligent and persistent. They interviewed at least 27 witnesses, reviewed the personnel records of the principals as well as the initial 911 call, the Cudell Recreation Center video of the shooting, lab reports and the records of Cleveland fire department and EMS respondents.

The report also includes a helpful narrative of events, although it would have been enhanced by a clearer timeline.

That might have been important in highlighting how long it took EMS to arrive on the scene - about 12 minutes after the "shots fired" report was relayed by Garmback to dispatchers with a request for EMS and Fire assistance, according to information in the report.

As attested to by a special FBI agent who was in the area investigating a bank robbery and who got to the scene about four minutes after the shooting - and who happened to be a highly trained paramedic with experience in severe abdominal injuries - what Tamir needed most was immediate transport to a hospital where he could get blood transfusions and surgery.

It's not clear, however, whether the delay in getting him to the hospital made a material difference given the severity of his wounds. The FBI agent was able to administer expert first aid once on the scene that may in fact have helped prolong Tamir's life - as well as comforting him in what may have been his last moments of consciousness.

The report also highlights troubling what-ifs regarding the initial 911 call.

On Nov. 22, 2014, at approximately 3:22 p.m. an unidentified 52-year-old white male called 911 in Cleveland. Hollinger took the call.

According to investigators, the man told Hollinger that there was a male outside the Cudell Recreation Center with a "pistol." The caller stated that the male was sitting on a swing, pulling the gun in and out of his pants and "scaring the [expletive deleted] out of people." The caller also said the male could be a "juvenile," and that the gun was "probably fake," but he "couldn't tell if it was real or not."

The 911 caller later told investigators that he witnessed Tamir pull the gun out on a passerby, "pointing the gun directly in the woman's face as she walked by him on the sidewalk."

Other witnesses said they'd seen Tamir and another male "shooting the gun at the tires of parked cars" as well as nearby trailers.

Hollinger, who took the 911 call, relayed the information about the male with a pistol electronically to Dispatcher Beth Mandl but apparently without critical details.

About our editorials

Editorials express the view of the

of The Plain Dealer and Northeast Ohio Media Group -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the newspaper.

* Talk about the topic of this editorial in the comments below.

* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.

* Email general questions or comments about the editorial board to Elizabeth Sullivan, opinion director for the Northeast Ohio Media Group.

Mandl requested a zone car to respond to the scene. Garmback and Loehmann answered the call.

Mandl told them "there's a black male sitting on a swing ... pulling a gun out of his pants and pointing it at people." Mandl told investigators she was not aware that the 911 caller had said the suspect may be a juvenile or that the weapon probably was fake.

The apparent failure of Hollinger to provide Mandl with an accurate description of what the 911 caller told her underscores the urgent need to upgrade dispatcher training, oversight and accountability and to improve communication between call-takers and dispatchers.

The lack of detail set the stage for disaster. Garmback, driving the patrol car, appears to have made it worse. His aggressive approach -- the report notes he drove the zone car over a curb, across the grass, past a playground to the gazebo where Tamir was standing -- left no room for negotiation.

Why he didn't stop the zone car at a distance to assess the situation and talk to Tamir defies logic. Better training on how to defuse a potentially violent confrontation appears merited.

Around this point, the report states that video surveillance captured Tamir "pulling up his outer garment with both hands near the right side of his waist."

Loehmann exited the vehicle and fired his Glock 9mm twice, according to investigators. One of the bullets hit Tamir in the abdomen.

Investigators could not ascertain whether Loehmann issued a warning while he was still in the zone car or before firing. One witness told investigators she heard, "Pop Pop ... Freeze let me see your hands ... Pop."

Beyond those issues, given that the 911 call involved a city recreation center, the report's findings raise questions about why police didn't call the center and speak to security personnel there as part of their initial response.

More what-ifs arise from the fact that an off-duty Cleveland police officer, William Cunningham, was working at the rec center at the time -- as he had been every Saturday for the past four years -- yet took no action when told of someone shooting a gun outside on rec-center grounds.

Cunningham told investigators that a "young man" had told him earlier that day that someone outside was "shooting, but he did not investigate. ..."

Cunningham was the first officer on the scene after the shooting. Cunningham described Loehmann as very distraught, according to the report. Cunningham quoted Loehmann as telling him: "He gave me no choice. He reached for the gun and there was nothing I could do."

Then there is the fact that Tamir was playing with a replica gun that looked all-too-real since its orange cap had been removed.

Investigators interviewed an anguished male who told them he was Tamir's "best friend." He admitted he had traded the plastic, spring-powered air soft BB gun, a replica of a real-deal Colt target pistol, to Rice that very day for a cellphone.

The boy, who has been identified in press reports as a 16-year-old, told Sheriff's Department investigators that he'd owned the BB gun a long time but that at some point in the past the gun had malfunctioned. He took it apart to repair it, but was unable to get the orange tip that identified it as a toy gun back on the barrel.

He said he told Tamir to be careful because the gun "looked real" - a point repeatedly made by the five Cleveland officers who subsequently arrived on the scene, who told investigators that they believed that the weapon lying on the grass near Tamir was real.

This case provides compelling evidence that legislation needs to be enacted to stop the manufacture of replica weapons.

The special FBI agent who administered first aid described Tamir's wound as a "particularly disturbing injury with no visible blood," but an open, eviscerated wound, according to the report.

"[H]e needed bright lights and cold surgical steel," the agent told investigators.

But he didn't tell Tamir that. Instead, he told him that he was a paramedic and he was there to help him.

And Tamir - like the child he was - reached for the agent's hand.