As It Always Does by Joseph Ross

As It Always Does

By: Joseph Ross Department of English

for Tamir Rice, a twelve year-old boy

killed by Cleveland Police Department officer,

Timothy Loehmann, on November 22, 2014

1. Recreation

Something about a rec center

should be safe.

It should be a place

where a twelve year-old boy

can play un-murdered.

But that is not the way

at Cleveland, Ohio’s

Cudell Recreation Center.

Because Cleveland hires

its police officers without

exploring their job history,

without looking for phrases

like “emotionally un

stable” or “unfit” for this job.

Those words could have been

read if someone had looked.

The dispatcher was told

twice by a caller that

this boy was playing

with a “probably fake” gun.

The caller said this

twice. The caller even said

he is “probably a juvenile”

but the dispatcher

didn’t think that was necessary

to tell the officers going

to the scene. The officer, who

must be able to see into the future,

said “I knew it was a gun.”

Such wisdom in the Cleveland

Police Department’s hires.

So a rec center becomes

a slaughter, a past-tense boy,

a mother torn into twelve

pieces of her son’s small life.

Yet recreation is about

as far from murder

as one can get. Unless

one is, you know,

a cop, in Cleveland.

2. Age

When you are twelve and

America thinks you are

twenty, you have no chance

of thirteen, much less

playing, goofing, being

twelve.

The police officer radioed

to others, after shooting you,

that you were a “Black male

maybe twenty.”

3. Squad Car

The police car jumped

the curb and barreled

across the lawn toward

the picnic table where

you played. You

stood up and walked

toward America and

in two seconds you were

shot. The officer later said

he warned you three times

but no one talks that fast,

not even America.

America greeted you

without speaking,

as it always does.