Eleven days after a Cleveland police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, an overwhelmingly black congregation of mourners gathered to say good-bye to the 12-year-boy. At a service at the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church punctuated with wails from Tamir’s grieving mother and simmering with a communal outrage that frequently bubbled over, Tamir’s uncle, Michael Petty, listed all the things his nephew would never do. He’d never drive a car. Never go to college. Never go out on a date. But Tamir, Petty added, “will live through us. Tamir will be heard from the grave.” The mourners rose to their feet.

“Police are public servants,” Petty said, “not James Bond with a license to kill…This is not an issue of black and white, but of right and wrong.”

He is right, but we must also acknowledge that racial tensions are fueling the rising tide of rage against police tactics in Cleveland and across the country. Tamir’s death, among others of young African-American males in recent months, has animated the voice of protests nationwide. On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder held a news conference in Cleveland to announce the findings of a nearly two-year investigation into allegations of excessive force by the city’s police.

“The trust between the Cleveland Division of Police and many of the communities it serves is broken,” the 58-page report concluded starkly. “Instead of working with Cleveland’s communities to understand their needs and concerns and to set crime-fighting priorities and strategies consistent with those needs, CDP too often polices in a way that contributes to community distrust and a lack of respect for officers – even the many officers who are doing their jobs effectively.”

The report offered this jarring example: “We observed a large sign hanging in the vehicle bay of a district station identifying it as a ‘forward operating base,’ a military term for a small, secured outpost used to support tactical operations in a war zone. This characterization reinforces the view held by some – both inside and outside the division – that CDP is an occupying force instead of a true partner and resource in the community policing initiative. The Division must undergo a cultural shift at all levels to change an ‘us-against-them’ mentality we too often observed…”

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Us against them. In the last hours of his life, Tamir was in a public park, talking on a cell phone, goofing around in the snow and walking around with an air pellet gun in his hand. Twice, the person who called 911 told the Cleveland police dispatcher that Tamir’s gun was “probably fake,” but no one told that to the two police officers in the car that zoomed into the park, just feet away from Tamir.

As the surveillance video later showed, within two seconds Patrolman Timothy Loehmann had rushed out of the passenger side of the car and Tamir was on the ground. He lay there for four minutes before anyone attempted first aid. Hours later, he was dead.

At the funeral Tamir’s teacher, Carletta Goodwin, described him as a popular and animated child. He enjoyed life, she said. He loved to joke around, tap on his desk and sing to himself, sometimes getting the rest of the class to sing along. He was also, she stressed, very protective of his mother. “Am I saying Tamir was perfect?” Goodwin said. “No. Are we perfect? No…. In the back of my mind, there’s a hole. Though his body is not there, I now carry him in my heart.”

Four days after Tamir’s death – and before much of anything was known about the police officer who killed him — a local news organization ran a story detailing the criminal history of Tamir’s parents. The coverage ignited another round of outrage in a community already reeling from what many believe are false claims by police that Tamir had wielded his non-lethal gun and ignored repeated warnings to drop it.

And now the media were turning their scrutiny to Tamir’s parents? Henry Currie, the family’s pastor, roared his objection to this narrative of blame. “The tragic circumstances of his death were not how he lived,” he said to mounting applause. “He lived a beautiful, awesome life of 12 years because his family raised him beyond a shadow of a doubt that his life had meaning.”

“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up for this family.” Again, the mourners rose to their feet.

Another story broke during Tamir’s memorial service, and it too reinforced the us-against-them narrative. The 26-year-old officer who killed Tamir, Timothy Loehmann, had previously served on the smaller force for Independence, Ohio. His father had said in an interview that his son left the suburban force for Cleveland’s because he wanted more action. On the morning of the funeral, Independence police released Loehmann’s personnel file, which told a darker story.

Most damning was a lengthy letter, dated November 29, 2012, from Deputy Chief Jim Polak that described Loehmann’s tendency to ignore orders and protocols when he saw fit. He also performed badly during live range gun training.

“I do not believe Ptl. Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment,” Polak wrote. Unfortunately in law enforcement there are times when instructions need (to) be followed to the letter, and I am under the impression Ptl. Loehmann, under certain circumstances, will not react in the way instructed. … I am recommending he be released from the employment of the City of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

The City of Cleveland hired him anyway. A police spokesman said they never saw his file. Loehmann is now on paid leave. The officer who was driving the patrol car that night, Frank Garmback, was involved in a lawsuit over the use of force in 2010 that the city settled this year for $100,000.