Philando Castile shooting - full dashcam video released

Honestly, I doubt his death would have been national news if he had been white. So yes, I think the NRA response (or lack thereof) would have been the same. We know police killed roughly twice as many white men as black men last year. Can you name even one of them? I can't.

As for a lack of a response, while one may seem warranted, I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to say here.

Don't disagree with any of this. Just stating that I believe the racial aspect (be it real, perceived, implied, or otherwise) is what made this "news". Obviously, the circumstances should dictate that, but that not typically the case.

I have to assume some portion of whites who die at the hands of police do so under controversial circumstances. We just don't generally hear about it.

It's interesting how even statistics can show whatever you want them to show. Hearing the police kill twice as many white men as black men makes one think that there may not be real racial issues at play except for the media. But those statistics get a lot less colorblind when you acknowledge that white (non Hispanic) men are roughly 30% of the US population and black men make up about 6%.
 
Sigh...I don't know why I'm having so much trouble getting my point across... I'll try again. 3 men and a boat says that he didn't follow the trial, but the fact that the jury came with a not guilty verdict is enough for him.

So I asked if he feels the same way about the verdict in the OJ case -a case he says he didn't follow either.

So this is not about the trials. because he admittedly didn't follow either;yet he is satisfied with the Castillo's case result, based on the verdict. So, I asked about the OJ verdict, if he was satisfied with the result based on the verdict.

Was I clear this time?

You were clear the first time & I still say it's a terrible comparison. Can we just agree to disagree?
 
It's interesting how even statistics can show whatever you want them to show. Hearing the police kill twice as many white men as black men makes one think that there may not be real racial issues at play except for the media. But those statistics get a lot less colorblind when you acknowledge that white (non Hispanic) men are roughly 30% of the US population and black men make up about 6%.

Not even remotely my point. No, white men are not killed by police at a higher "rate", but they are killed in a higher total. And yet we don't hear about any of these people because presumably it's not controversial enough to be news.

As for black men being killed by police at a higher rate than white men, this is true. Nobody denies that. OTOH, black men are also killed by non-police at a much higher rate than are white men. So, it's a bit unfair to imply the "killed by police" rate automatically indicates racism.

On that note, white men are killed by police at a much higher rate than are black women. To me, that doesn't indicate a police bias against white men compared to black women - even if the pure numbers might lead one down that road.
 
That's not the point. This is about the verdict. 3 men and a boat says that if the jury decided not guilty in the Castille's case that's good enough for him.

So my question is again, if he thinks the not guilty verdict for the Castille's case is good enough for him, is the not guilty verdict also good enough for him?

I don't know, I think it's a very simple and straightforward question. I don't get the confusion.

I don't think it's as straightforward as you present it. In the Castile case there is no doubt who inflicted the mortal wounds, leaving simply the question of was the choice to use deadly force justified or not? In the case of OJ there are no known witnesses who can say with certainty two people are dead by OJ's hands. Reactions of juries to circumstantial evidence (which is an entirely valid way to prove criminal responsibility) is generally tricky.

I disagree with the juries in both cases. I disagree with the Casey Anthony jury.(I am still stunned with this verdict.) I disagree with a great number of juries in cases virtually no one hears of on a regular basis.

If we authorize and empower an armed force to protect us it's critical we have vigilant oversight about how they use those powers. It's completely repugnant to sit by and feel smug and comfortable when we see those powers being grossly misused simply because it's happening to "them" and think "we're" safe and "they" probably deserve it anyway. Once you are willing to drive down that road you better be ready to turn the corner and realize that force you armed and authorized suddenly has unfettered power over everyone, including you and everyone you love.
 


I very much disagree with the Hung Jury in the Bill Cosby trial.
The statements made by one of the two jurors who seemed to obviously have 'hung' the jury, IMHO, are clearly pre-conceived and prejudicial... Just IMHO, those comments alone should warrant an immediate mis-trial and new trial. No doubt in my mind.

Having said that, while I do not place any great weight on the outcome of any particular jury.... I do think that there are two sides of this story.
It is very very clear that 'Driving while black', 'Fear of blackness', etc.... are very real issues!!!!
But, from some of the details that I have heard debated, which may either be totally truthful or not, I am not sure that this cop, who is not what I would consider 'white', should automatically be judged guilty of any kind of murder.
I don't feel that, from what I know, that I am qualified to make any such judgement.

I am also remembering all of the uproar and protest about the one incident where a black man was shot... by a BLACK cop.
 
Did any one see the video of the little girl comforting her mother in the back of the police car? Absolutely heart wrenching

I didn't watch it, because I didn't want to put myself through that, but I read the transcript.

In the video, which appears to have been recorded just moments after Castile was killed, Reynolds is seated handcuffed in the back of a squad car with her daughter when she shouts an expletive after her cell phone dies. This prompts her daughter to ask her not to scream “because I don’t want you to get shooted.” When Reynolds says she wishes she could take the handcuffs off, her daughter yells, “No please don’t, I don’t want you to get shooted … I wish this town was safer.” https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/i-dont-want-you-to-get-shooted/531135/

There's a little girl who will grow up believing - with absolute justification, based on her own personal experience - that policemen are murderers and the legal system will not offer any redress.

I can't help thinking about how we teach our kids (in school, and at home), "The policeman is your friend. He'll help you, if you're in trouble."

When my son was 15, a police officer stopped him one night on the street and politely asked for his name and where he'd been/was going to. My son, a bit puzzled, began answering honestly. Then, a moment later, a cruiser drove up, another cop leaned out the window and shouted, "Not that kid! THAT kid!" And he pointed down the street at an equally confused teenager, standing about half a block away.

My son has dark curly hair and wasn't wearing a jacket on that cold night. The same was true of the other boy. There we one major difference, though, which I'm guessing the dispatcher didn't see fit to mention - my son is white, and the other lad was black. When my son left, he said the two officers were chatting with the other teenager. No doubt asking the same questions. Everyone seemed quite relaxed.

We have no idea what that was about, but we were entertained that the boys were evidently interchangeable.

Even when the police chased a drug dealer into our back yard, while we saw a lot of police cars on our street, and officers in tactical vests who politely asked us to stay indoors... we didn't see anyone with a drawn weapon.

I don't think our force is perfect. Far from it. I've heard some disturbing things about the local jail and prisoners not getting treated with courtesy and respect. Also, a mentally ill gentleman died of head trauma during a scuffle with a cop, and that officer is facing a manslaughter charge. But, personally, all of my interactions with the force have been positive, and that's also been true for my friends and family members.

When my daughter was five, she could trust cops and believe that they were the "good guys". This little girl is living in a different reality altogether, and it's heartbreaking.

If you ever need to define the concept of "privilege" for someone - this is it!
 


When my daughter was five, she could trust cops and believe that they were the "good guys". This little girl is living in a different reality altogether, and it's heartbreaking.

I remember crying when this shooting happened because I believed Diamond Reynolds' description afterwards.

My, then, 3DD asked me what was wrong (she was why I was so upset, because it was so easy to relate). I told her nothing she will ever have to worry about.

And that answer made me sick. It was true and a good way to not burden her at such a young age. But why can my precious 3 year old see a policeman and feel safe and Ms. Reynolds' see the same man and feel terror?

It is 2017. THIS SHOULD NOT BE REALITY.
 
I remember crying when this shooting happened because I believed Diamond Reynolds' description afterwards.

My, then, 3DD asked me what was wrong (she was why I was so upset, because it was so easy to relate). I told her nothing she will ever have to worry about.

And that answer made me sick. It was true and a good way to not burden her at such a young age. But why can my precious 3 year old see a policeman and feel safe and Ms. Reynolds' see the same man and feel terror?

It is 2017. THIS SHOULD NOT BE REALITY.

When your daughter is a bit older, you should definitely start having these conversations with her. Tell her about the injustice in the world, and let her see how sad/mad it makes you. Maybe even take her along to a protest, if you think it's appropriate.

I got catapulted into this conversation early, thanks to 9-11. I was online, when I saw the news, and I began to cry. My daughter was five, and she was instantly at my side asking, "What happened? Why are you crying? Did a plane hit the CN Tower?" She could read some of what was on my computer screen, but she was confused by the CNN logo. I closed the page, dried my tears, and spent the next hour or so trying to explain in terms my 3 and 5 might understand, what had just happened. Insofar as I even understood it myself. My 5 year old wanted to know why people would want to hurt other people. Maybe we just need to explain to them we're nice, she said, confident that all people are fundamentally good and violence only happens out of misunderstanding. Meanwhile my 3 year old went and found a stick in the bushes and brandished it, saying, "Don't be scared, Mommy. If the bad men come, I'll poke them!" Somehow I kept it together long enough to put both of them on the school bus and send them off for their half day at kindergarten.

However, while I didn't intend to start talking about such weighty topics at such a young age... I will say, I think it's been to all of our benefit. And it's not just me teaching the kids what I believe. As they've grown, they've also broadened my perspective, and challenged many of the things I take for granted.

There's a lot of injustice in the world, and our kids need to know that.
 
There's a lot of injustice in the world, and our kids need to know that.

Could not agree more. I just don't think I have the abilities to put this particular tragedy in age appropriate language.

Sometimes when I hear or see something, I will tell my kids, "Sometimes other people treat people poorly just because they are different. Maybe their skin is a different color or they don't go to the same church, but we are all people and we all are fundamentally the same."

I actually did take my youngest to a political rally, but only because I was still nursing at the time. When my kids get to the age that they ask to go along (and I went to several political protests last summer) I will take them. When they ask me to explain something on the news or why I am watching something, I do my best to tell them what is happening, why I'm watching it and what I believe.

ETA: I don't believe in taking my kids with me to protests until they are old enough to verbalize why they want to go and I know it will be safe.
 
Could not agree more. I just don't think I have the abilities to put this particular tragedy in age appropriate language.

Sometimes when I hear or see something, I will tell my kids, "Sometimes other people treat people poorly just because they are different. Maybe their skin is a different color or they don't go to the same church, but we are all people and we all are fundamentally the same."

I actually did take my youngest to a political rally, but only because I was still nursing at the time. When my kids get to the age that they ask to go along (and I went to several political protests last summer) I will take them. When they ask me to explain something on the news or why I am watching something, I do my best to tell them what is happening, why I'm watching it and what I believe.

You're quite right! Your little one is only three.

When my daughter was three, there was some tragedy on the news involving orphaned children. My daughter had been largely oblivious to the news up to that point, but suddenly she zeroed right in and wanted to know where these children's mums and dads were. "Oh look," I said, switching the TV off. "They found them! Isn't that nice! All the boys and girls are back together with their families again!"

"Yay!" she said, and went off to play. And we stopped putting the news on while she was awake for a couple years after. :upsidedow

The conversation has to happen, but sometimes there's just no way to put it into words. Especially when they're so very young.
 
It was heartbreaking to watch all the way around. I know this isn't a popular perspective but I really felt for the officer after watching it. He was clearly panicked - you could hear it in every word he said/screamed and see it in his body language. And that panic only intensified after the shooting. His training, our culture, and perhaps his temperament failed him in carrying out his duties. Rather than rationally being able to assess a threat he heard the word gun come out of a black man's mouth and went straight into him-or-me mode.

Black men and the people who love them undoubtedly suffer the worst at the hands of our dysfunctional police culture, but I think this video showed that the officers are not the remorseless, trigger happy abusers of authority that they're often portrayed as. Some might be, but others are just guys with a hard job, too little training, and a set of ingrained biases rooted in a culture that presents black men as people to be feared. Castile and his family aren't the only ones who would be better off today if the police received better training; the officer and his family would be as well.
 
Logic would dictate that, at this point, one should stop doing anything with your hands, put them in full view of the police officer and wait for instructions.

A little use of logic on Castile's part would have saved his life.

Logic seems to be in short supply these days.

Doesn't it make more sense, though, to expect that the trained police officer be the one to calmly issue commands, rather than putting the burden of knowing how to behave with a screaming man with a gun at your door on motorists?

In some states, that's part of your CCW training. I have no idea if that's part of the training the victim received or not, but it would probably be a good idea for CCW holders & law enforcement to be on the same page in these situations. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be very common.

Yep. Here, the training is "notify the officer and follow his instructions". Not exactly helpful when there are no clear instructions offered.

I've been in the car with a few CCW holders when they were pulled over; carrying is pretty common around here, both open and concealed. I've never seen a police officer react the way the officer in the Castile case did. At most, in a high-crime area, I've heard one issue advice to move slowly when presenting license and registration. And that was once. In a bad neighborhood in Detroit. Late at night. Normal seems to be for the cop to nod and basically proceed with the traffic stop as though the gun wasn't even mentioned. Perhaps on some level he's being more cautious, but he's not carrying the rest of the stop out at gunpoint. But that's with middle aged white guys behind the wheel.


I happen to think the officer in this case was out of line in the use of deadly force. That said, I don't think it helps anyone to jump to the idea "police" are the problem, "police" are racist, etc. We legitimately need good police in a civilized society where we look to live by rule of law. It should be equally as important to the police as it is to the citizenry that all police officers are abiding by the laws and genuinely looking to protect and serve the wellbeing of all of us.

One police officer is not every police officer. Bad actions by one are not an indictment of all. That same idea should be applied to those who engage in criminal behavior. People who want to live peacefully under rule of law should want to see those who break the law disciplined and punished, hopefully so that they either learn not to do it again or are permanently detained so they cannot do it again. Their race, the color of their skin, their religious practice, their gender, none of that should matter. Break the law, face the appropriate punishment.

Fair enough, but at the same time, we as a culture have a tendency to reduce big societal issues to the individual level and that gets in the way of broad-based, effective solutions. It isn't that the police are racist, but it may be that our culture is passively racist, our media reinforces toxic stereotypes, our police training is lacking in de-escalation and threat assessment skills, etc. Making it about each individual officer derails the bigger discussions that need to be had about the forces that shape those individuals' decisions.

Not even remotely my point. No, white men are not killed by police at a higher "rate", but they are killed in a higher total. And yet we don't hear about any of these people because presumably it's not controversial enough to be news.

As for black men being killed by police at a higher rate than white men, this is true. Nobody denies that. OTOH, black men are also killed by non-police at a much higher rate than are white men. So, it's a bit unfair to imply the "killed by police" rate automatically indicates racism.

On that note, white men are killed by police at a much higher rate than are black women. To me, that doesn't indicate a police bias against white men compared to black women - even if the pure numbers might lead one down that road.

Oh, I think there certainly is a tendency to view men as a whole as more threatening than women.

But when it comes to race and police killings, I think the narrative that emerges is what points to racial motivations (though I don't think that's a good word; motivation feels too conscious and I don't think most of these situations are that deliberate). There have been a number of shootings of white men in my area over the years, but it has always been a very clear-cut event - a suicidal man waving a gun at police (he was shot once and survived), a man shot to death in the commission of an armed robbery in which he had two other people at gunpoint, a drug dealer shot when attempting to drive through the officers attempting to arrest him after a raid. I can't think of a single case of police killing an unarmed white guy because they felt he was a potential threat, or of a white kid getting shot playing with airsoft guns, or if a traffic stop ending in a fatal shooting when a white driver tells the officer he is legally carrying a gun.
 
Colleen, You make some very good comments!

And, on the one side-note... I don't believe in 'political protest'... And would never take my son/child to one, or encourage my grown son to participate.
I see the footage, and there is nothing positive or effective going on.
I believe in supporting one's beliefs and causes... Not protesting anything that does not happen to be my point of view.
 
Colleen, You make some very good comments!

And, on the one side-note... I don't believe in 'political protest'... And would never take my son/child to one, or encourage my grown son to participate.
I see the footage, and there is nothing positive or effective going on.
I believe in supporting one's beliefs and causes... Not protesting anything that does not happen to be my point of view.

My daughter and I went to this, in Canada:

"From the Washington Monument to Germany’s Brandenburg Gate and even to Greenland, scientists, students and research advocates rallied on an often soggy Earth Day, conveying a global message about scientific freedom without political interference, the need for adequate spending for future breakthroughs and just the general value of scientific pursuits." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...rch-for-science-in-us-cities/article34791908/

I'm really glad we did! This is a cause we both feel very strongly about, especially my daughter who is working in her university's bio lab.

I would have taken her when she was little, too, as she's always been passionate about science and I think she would have appreciated hearing the speeches. (Many of which talked about how they discovered a love for science as young children.)
 
Again. You have the remarkable ability to think clearly about this after the fact. 4 seconds. 4 seconds is all that elapsed here. Not like some prolonged amount of time.

Yes, and that works on both sides of the coin doesn't it? We can all think clearly "after the fact" but the cop had only 4 seconds to make a judgement call. Monday morning quarterbacking is always perfect isn't it.
 
Doesn't it make more sense, though, to expect that the trained police officer be the one to calmly issue commands, rather than putting the burden of knowing how to behave with a screaming man with a gun at your door on motorists?



Yep. Here, the training is "notify the officer and follow his instructions". Not exactly helpful when there are no clear instructions offered.

I've been in the car with a few CCW holders when they were pulled over; carrying is pretty common around here, both open and concealed. I've never seen a police officer react the way the officer in the Castile case did. At most, in a high-crime area, I've heard one issue advice to move slowly when presenting license and registration. And that was once. In a bad neighborhood in Detroit. Late at night. Normal seems to be for the cop to nod and basically proceed with the traffic stop as though the gun wasn't even mentioned. Perhaps on some level he's being more cautious, but he's not carrying the rest of the stop out at gunpoint. But that's with middle aged white guys behind the wheel.




Fair enough, but at the same time, we as a culture have a tendency to reduce big societal issues to the individual level and that gets in the way of broad-based, effective solutions. It isn't that the police are racist, but it may be that our culture is passively racist, our media reinforces toxic stereotypes, our police training is lacking in de-escalation and threat assessment skills, etc. Making it about each individual officer derails the bigger discussions that need to be had about the forces that shape those individuals' decisions.



Oh, I think there certainly is a tendency to view men as a whole as more threatening than women.

But when it comes to race and police killings, I think the narrative that emerges is what points to racial motivations (though I don't think that's a good word; motivation feels too conscious and I don't think most of these situations are that deliberate). There have been a number of shootings of white men in my area over the years, but it has always been a very clear-cut event - a suicidal man waving a gun at police (he was shot once and survived), a man shot to death in the commission of an armed robbery in which he had two other people at gunpoint, a drug dealer shot when attempting to drive through the officers attempting to arrest him after a raid. I can't think of a single case of police killing an unarmed white guy because they felt he was a potential threat, or of a white kid getting shot playing with airsoft guns, or if a traffic stop ending in a fatal shooting when a white driver tells the officer he is legally carrying a gun.

You can't think of such an incident with a white person because those things just don't make the news. White cop lit up the entire passenger compartment full of unarmed white teens near here after a routine traffic stop when the driver left the car in neutral and it started to roll away. Thankfully, no fatalities, but 3 of 4 wounded - none of whom was the driver. And with several hundred white men killed by police each year, one would have to assume at least 1 or 2 would be memorable enough to make the national news. For the record, roughly 1 of every 10 white men shot & killed by police is unarmed (same percentage as with black men).
 
Yes, and that works on both sides of the coin doesn't it? We can all think clearly "after the fact" but the cop had only 4 seconds to make a judgement call. Monday morning quarterbacking is always perfect isn't it.
He's PAID to do that. It's his JOB. I do expect more of him.

Notice the OTHER cop....who's hand never even moves to his gun. That is a trained police officer, assessing a risk rationally.

There was no risk here. None. And, this cop (Yanez) clearly never should have been one. He lacked the temperament.
 
Yes, and that works on both sides of the coin doesn't it? We can all think clearly "after the fact" but the cop had only 4 seconds to make a judgement call. Monday morning quarterbacking is always perfect isn't it.

The cop didn't only have 4 seconds to make a judgement and react though. He determined how long he had to make a call and react.
 

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