Loomis objects to much of the above depiction of events, shifting between past and present tense as he explains why.

“Tamir Rice is in the wrong,” he said. “He’s menacing. He’s 5-feet-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body. Tamir looks to his left and sees a police car. He puts his gun in his waistband. Those people—99 percent of the time those people run away from us. We don’t want him running into the rec center. That could be a whole other set of really bad events. They’re trying to flush him into the field. Frank [the driver] is expecting the kid to run. The circumstances are so fluid and unique. …

“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. Loehmann is thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s pulling it out of his waistband.’”

As for Loehmann, whose lawyer did not return a call for this story, Loomis is livid about media coverage of the young officer’s personnel file from his time in 2012 with the police force in Independence, Ohio. The file, which Cleveland police admit they never saw before hiring Loehmann in March 2014, outlines numerous concerns about his emotional maturity that led to his forced resignation. Much of the coverage focused on a description in the file of Loehmann breaking down in tears at a firing range.

All rubbish, Loomis said.

“This Timothy Loehmann thing, this is a sideshow,” he said. “Nothing in Timothy Loehmann’s history would have made him ineligible to be hired. The Select Committee recommended him unanimously. He was emotional at the firing range because his girlfriend of three years broke up with him in a text message.

“And there’s something you need to understand about suburban police forces like Independence. It’s even more competitive. For some reason, Timothy had juice with the mayor, who told the chief, ‘Hire Tim.’ He had a political target on his back from Day One. For some reason, the sergeant didn’t like him ... he didn’t fit the mold.”

Independence Police Chief Michael Kilbane scoffed at Loomis’ version of Loehmann’s short tenure on the force there.

“Absolutely, unqualifiedly, not true,” he said. “I wasn’t chief then, but I’ve had to familiarize myself with every aspect of this case.” No one, he said, makes the chief hire officers, and Loehmann was still on probation when they let him go.

“He didn’t have time not to fit in here. He was here a matter of two to three days after he finished academy. There are no secrets here. His personnel file speaks for itself.”

***

It does not take long in the company of Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams to sense his impatience with much of the recent media coverage of his force. He has had it with the prominent narrative that casts Cleveland as a city of communities betrayed by the police who were supposed to protect them.

“This whole notion that everyone is afraid of Cleveland police officers—and there’s that perception out there—every chance I get, I say it’s not true.”

This is a persistent theme in conversations with the mayor’s office and the police department: The media are the enemy. Of course, incompetent governments have been blaming the messenger—the media—since the days of the first scribes. The Department of Justice presumably did not make up its evidence. Dettelbach rattled off a partial list of the research efforts behind the findings, which included meeting with nearly 50 groups in the community.

“We met with ministers, the police unions, at [public housing] headquarters, forums at Olivet church, at LGBT offices, with homeless groups,” he said. “We’ve tried to be different about transparency, involving as many people as possible. We also interacted as much as possible with police officers, and had a series of ride-alongs in every police district in the city.”

The chief and mayor do have legitimate grievances about some coverage, particularly from younger, less experienced reporters assigned to what used to be veteran beats. Just as valid are journalists’ complaints that Cleveland has a long tradition of thin-skinned public officials who fashion their level of accountability not on the public’s right to know, but on the state of their moods. The relationship is increasingly contentious. After he appeared recently on CBS News' “60 Minutes,” the Plain Dealer’s online partner, Northeast Ohio Media Group, posted a story with the headline, “Should Police Chief Calvin Williams talk to local media?”

This growing animosity between officials and the local media is a disservice to a community that—in town hall meetings and in written recommendations, and on social media—has made clear its top priority: transparency, transparency, transparency.

This requires a fragile balance. Private consent-decree negotiations allow for the give-and-take that can occur only when you aren’t afraid of starring in the latest single-source blog post. However, the public must be privy to the process, with regular updates, if officials are to earn the trust necessary for this city to heal.

Calvin Williams, who is 51, has the potential to be the conduit for change. This is his 29th year with the police force, but only his first as chief. He came to our interview with a written list of improvements in hiring, training and management that he’d launched before the DOJ report’s release. He is quick to point out that he has called Cleveland home from age 4, when his strong-willed single mother brought him here from Tuskegee, Alabama.

“She didn’t take any stuff” from her three boys, he said. “She taught us to work hard and help people when we can.”

When Williams was a sophomore at Glenville High School, he was bused to the white side of town to attend Lincoln West.