After a recently filed court document revealed that the city of Cleveland blamed 12-year-old Tamir Rice for his death, the city's major has apologized. Rice was shot and killed in November when a Cleveland police officer mistook his toy gun for a real one.
According to CNN, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson offered words of apology to the Rice family for how last week's filing was worded:
We did something that ... is hurtful to the family, that is disrespectful to them and the victim as well as the city of Cleveland, he said.
The wording in the legal filing, Jackson said, was standard language used in legal defense, and the insensitivity was not intended. But now, he said, the city will be rewording its filing -- a decision he pushed for as soon as he found out about it.
What I care about right now is that the family of Tamir Rice and the people of the city of Cleveland understand and realize that we are sorry for what we have done and that we apologize to them, Jackson said.
Despite Jackson's apology, Rice family attorney Benjamin Crump maintained that his words simply were not sufficient:
I don't want him just to apologize for the poor word use and the grammatical phrases, Crump told CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper on Monday. I want him to apologize for the death of this 12-year-old child, one of his citizens, at the hands of what we believe were police officers who were improperly trained.
Rice's death has been ruled a homicide by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, and Rice's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
[via CNN]
