The City of Cleveland has filed a creditor's claim against Tamir Rice's estate. Tamir Rice is the unarmed 12-year-old kid shot dead on sight by a Cleveland cop; they want his parents to pay the EMS bill for the boy's "dying expenses."
The city filed a creditor's notice against the estate of Tamir Rice looking for a past due amount of $500. What's that $500 for? It's "owing for emergency medical services rendered as the decedent's last dying expense under Ohio Revised Code."
"That the city would submit a bill and call itself a creditor after having had its own police officers slay 12-year-old Tamir displays a new pinnacle of callousness and insensitivity," one of Rice's family attorneys, Subodh Chandra, told Scene this afternoon. "The kind of poor judgment that it takes to do such a thing is nothing short of breathtaking. Who on earth would think this was a good idea and file this on behalf of the city? This adds insult to homicide.
$50 of the bill is for gas, but they didn't charge him for the bullet.
That old adage about not assuming malice where stupidity is possible? Hard to believe, given the relentless media scrutiny and the obvious PR repercussions of doing this. This looks like someone making a very nasty point.
UPDATE: They've backed off and apologized:
City officials say the family was never billed directly for emergency services the 12-year-old received after he was fatally shot by Cleveland police in 2014.… Court documents showed the city had filed a claim, saying the Rice family was past due $500 for emergency services Tamir received after the shooting.
