Monday’s revelation that no one will go to trial for the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice probably surprised no one. Surely, we all knew how this would end. Just one week earlier, yet another black family—Sandra Bland’s—did not get the legal closure they sought after their loved one died in the hands of police. A grand jury could “indict a ham sandwich,” but police officers who kill citizens tend to escape that outcome with alarming regularity. Per the Washington Post’s count, 18 officers have been charged with crimes related to “officer-involved” shootings in 2015—and that’s worthy of note because only 54 were indicted in the prior 10 years. The Post’s reporters attribute the rise, in part, to the fact we’ve been able to see those shootings. “In 10 of the 2015 cases,” the Post wrote, “prosecutors had a video record of the shooting.” Then they quote a Chicago pastor who thanked God for technology and expressed a hope that “maybe it’s finally helping us crack the blue code of silence.”

If only it were that easy. Police officers don’t steer clear of these kinds of consequences merely because they stay quiet about the misdeeds of other cops. They have help. Not only are there structural standards for legal killings that favor an officer’s “objectively reasonable” survival instincts over the life of an unarmed citizen, but also the very lawyers charged with seeking punishment for the officers can enforce those standards. The Tamir Rice investigation is the clearest example yet of why independent investigators and prosecutors must be assigned by state authorities to every case of police violence.

That was made clear at Monday’s press conference, where Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announced that a grand jury had determined that no criminal charges would be filed against Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the two Cleveland police officers involved in Rice’s death. Given the lack of success lately in that arena, the Rice family had been girding themselves for this outcome. But the grand jury got a big push from McGinty himself, who revealed that he’d recommended that no charges be filed, in direct contradiction to the mandate of his elected office: to faithfully seek indictments and prosecute cases so as to make his jurisdiction a safer place to live. “That was also my recommendation and that of our office after reviewing the investigation and the law,” he said on Monday.

McGinty had long been under fire from Rice family attorneys and his fellow Democrats for his perceived slow-footing of the investigation into Rice’s death. He responded by accusing the family of being “economically motivated,” and made clear on Monday that he doesn’t care about appearances. Rather than offering regret about the grand jury’s decision and arguing that they made the wrong call, McGinty and his lieutenants chose to do the exact opposite.

I’m not an attorney, but everything about McGinty’s Monday presser seemed off from the start. Calling the shooting “a perfect storm of human error,” he erroneously laid the blame at the feet of a dead 12-year-old along with the two officers and the dispatcher who neglected to inform them that the 911 caller said repeatedly that the Airsoft pellet gun Tamir had on him was “probably fake.” In accordance with the three reports their office had solicited, each of which declared the shooting reasonable and legally appropriate, McGinty and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Matt Meyer launched into a detailed explanation of why the officers weren’t criminally liable.