Jeb Bush Confuses Chicago and Cleveland About Tamir Rice Case, Says 'My Bad'
Bush made the remarks in South Carolina.
— -- Jeb Bush appeared to confuse Chicago and Cleveland when he was asked about the Tamir Rice shooting and communities grappling with police violence after a meet and greet at Hudson's Smokehouse BBQ in Lexington, SC.
"I think that Chicago has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust. The level of violence is abhorrent,” he responded.
He was reminded that 12-year-old Rice was shot in Cleveland.
"Oh I’m sorry. My bad. In every community where you have these cases the elected officials and the police chief need to engage with the community to rebuild trust, but the process worked. If there’s a grand jury that looks at all the facts and doesn't indict maybe there’s reasons for that."
Rice was shot and killed by patrolman Timothy Loehmann in November 2014. On Tuesday, a grand jury declined to indict the officer who killed him. Rice was shot while playing with what turned out to be a pellet gun.
There have also been recent incidents of police-involved violence in Chicago. The department there admitted one of its officers “accidentally” killed a grandmother and mother of five over the weekend.
Bush also criticized the recent “politicization” of the federal Attorney General’s office.
“There’s been lots of cases where he [President Obama] goes out and calls for an investigation and it turns out there’s nothing there; not civil rights violations or any of the civil violations that he had jurisdiction over," he said. "I think there should be more caution about using the federal government's power and more focus on trying to rebuild trust from the bottom up."
