[Flash Walken]

Amid a roiling national debate about police oversight, the Miami City Commission last night voted to take away Miami PD's ability to investigate its own police shootings. Instead, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement will probe those deaths.

Miami's police union president didn't take the news quietly. Sgt. Javier Ortiz blasted commissioners in a two-page letter slamming them for spending more time talking about cops harassing public urinators than discussing a recent spate of murders.

"Miami cops aren't killing people," Ortiz writes. "Bad people in our community are killing our loved ones."Ortiz points out that six people have been murdered in Miami in the past week. Where's the outrage over that violence?

That's a very fair critique, but it's also a bit of a red herring. Hardemon might have gone way off point, but the larger issue of yesterday's discussion wasn't to solve Miami's rampant peeing-in-public problems. It was to talk about the legitimate issue of whether enough checks and balances are in place on Miami officers who use deadly force.

That's only a particular point of discussion, remember, because Miami PD is still under a Department of Justice civil rights investigation for a string of seven deadly police shootings in eight months a few years ago.

One officers involved in three fatal shootings -- Officer George Diaz -- is also one of the most frequent Taser users on the force, a recent New Times investigation found.

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/ripti..._urination.php

Tamir Rice Shooting video released. It's incredibly sad.

The officers stood by without tending to Tamir, the extended video showed. It was not until four minutes after the shooting, the video showed, that Tamir received medical assistance when another man was seen bent down next to him. According to Benjamin Crump, the Rice family’s lawyer, the man who provided the first medical assistance was an F.B.I. agent who was in the neighborhood. Paramedics arrived eight minutes after the shooting, and Tamir was taken away on a stretcher about five minutes later, the video shows.

A shorter surveillance video released earlier showed Tamir being shot by a rookie Cleveland officer, Timothy Loehmann, seconds after the police cruiser arrived and skidded to a stop next to the boy at a gazebo outside the recreation center. The black pistol that Tamir had, which looked like a real handgun, was an imitation. His mother later said it had been given to Tamir to play with by a friend that afternoon.

The police said Tamir was told to raise his hands but instead reached to his waistband for the gun, though the previously released surveillance video showed that the shooting happened so fast, it was hard to know whether the officer issued any warnings or whether Tamir could have understood them if he did.

The killing, which occurred two weeks before a Justice Department report concluded that the Cleveland police had a pattern of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force,” angered many residents of the city, which has a black majority. On Thursday, the city’s media relations director, Dan Williams, said the extended video was released once it was clear that it would not interfere with the investigation. “My intent was to get it out so the public could see all of the tape,” Mr. Williams said.

A Cleveland police spokeswoman said they could not comment because the shooting was under investigation. Officials from Cleveland’s main police union did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview, Mr. Crump called the events on the video “outrageous and inhumane.”

“How inhumane to put her in handcuffs and sit her in the car about four feet from where her brother lay dying,” Mr. Crump said of Tamir’s sister, “and she has to watch that. And they rendered no aid to this kid.”

Family members thought it was important, Mr. Crump said, for “people see this video as they continue to fight for justice and see whether the grand jury will hold the police officer accountable.” Mr. Crump said an audio recording from a phone of someone at the recreation center indicated Tamir was alive when the officers were detaining his sister. The recording, he said, reveals that a teenager had tried to calm Tamir’s sister as she rushed to the shooting, saying: “He’s not dead. He’s still moving.”

Officer Loehmann, 26, who fired the fatal shot, had quit a suburban police force after his supervisors determined two years ago that he had had a “dangerous loss of composure” during firearms training and was emotionally unprepared to cope with stresses of the job. The Cleveland police acknowledged that they had never reviewed the previous police personnel file of Officer Loehmann.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/us...?smid=re-share