"The Rice family is disturbed by the city's behavior," Subodh Chandra, a lawyer for the family, wrote in an email to The Washington Post about the creditor's claim. "The callousness, insensitivity, and poor judgment required for the city to send a bill - its own police officers having slain 12-year-old Tamir - is breathtaking."
He said the act "added insult to homicide."
Jonathan Abady, the family's lead counsel on a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, said in a phone interview with The Post that the claim is "mystifying."
"This is obviously a deliberate, considered action by the city of Cleveland; it required a formal court filing," he said.
A grand jury's decision not to indict the officers last December prompted protesters to call for a federal investigation into the shooting and for the resignation of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty.
In his announcement, McGinty said enhanced surveillance video made it "undisputably clear" that Tamir was reaching for something "indistinguishable" from a real gun.
The case fueled ongoing controversy about police shootings and racial profiling: Tamir died days before unrest erupted in response to the non-indictment of officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner in New York, two unarmed African American men.
Tamir's family alleges in the suit that Officers Loehmann and Garmback did not attempt to resuscitate or administer first aid to the boy after he was wounded. Instead, the suit claims, they tackled and handcuffed Tamir's distraught 14-year-old sister and placed her in the back of the police cruiser.
Tamir succumbed to his injuries in the hospital the next day.
The police officers maintained in signedstatements that Tamir appeared to be much older than his age. McGinty was criticized for releasing these statements and other pieces of evidence to the press, which family members viewed the move as a show of support for the officers.
"Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting like the police officers' defense attorney," Tamir's mother, Samaria Rice, said in a statement following the grand jury decision.
The city's creditor's claim asks the family to pay the $US500 ambulance fee by March 11.