Former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann will continue to fight for his job, even though an arbitrator ruled he should not have it.
Four years ago, Loehmann fatally shot Tamir Rice, an unarmed 12-year old playing with a pellet gun.
Though Loehmann was cleared in the shooting, he was fired last year over his job application. He had allegedly left out that his supervisors wanted him fired from a previous job and let him resign instead.
Loehmann challenged his termination through arbitration and lost this week.
“The ruling here is unfair, it’s incorrect, and we are going to appeal it,” said Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association.
Calling it a “witch hunt,” he believed the decision was politically-motivated to please those who still want Loehmann to pay for Rice’s death.
The union’s attorney said the city has no history of firing someone over this kind of application.
“You’ve got a head of EMS who had been a convicted felon and she’s the head of EMS. You had a head of consumer affairs who lied and said that she had a college degree, created a false transcript,” said Henry Hilow, CPPA attorney. “The tragedy of this is this young man was fired because they needed a pretext to fire him.”
Hilow claims Loehmann left his previous job as an officer in Independence on good terms, cited personal reasons for his departure, and was never disciplined there.
They now have up to three months to file their appeal to a county court.