An Analysis of the Philando Castile Shooting

It takes a lot of people doing something wrong to create a tragedy. In the case of the Philando Castile shooting (shown above), a lot of people want to write it off as racism. If you look at the whole situation, there is plenty of blame to go to everyone involved, including society as a whole. When you break down the video into individual parts, you can see everything that went wrong from the beginning.

(NOTE: There is also a video taken by Diamond Reynolds, his alleged girlfriend, after the shooting from inside the car. To her it was more important to get this on social media than to try and comfort the dying Castile, or even to look after her child in the back seat.)

THE BEGINNING:

The police dash-cam video starts with the officers following Castile's car, and then they pull him over. The confronting officer, Jeronimo Yanez, approaches the car and informs Castile that he pulled him over because Castile's tail lights were broken.

This sounds innocuous enough, but there is an inherent problem here. Why does Yanez need Castile's license, registration and insurance? At this point, Yanez is no longer trying to serve the public good by alerting a motorist to a broken tail light. No, now Yanez is trying to find something illegal.

Actually, that was his purpose from the beginning. According to police emergency audios obtained by The Star-Tribune:

The officer decided the car looked suspicious. He radioed to a nearby squad that he was going to pull it over and check IDs of the driver and passenger.

“The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery,” he said casually, according to police audio obtained by the Star Tribune. “The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the wide-set nose. I couldn’t get a good look at the passenger.”

A "wide-set nose" is not much of an identifying characteristic, and Yanez couldn't even tell what the passenger looked like. This looks a lot like being pulled over for "driving while black".

Yanez was fishing here, based on virtually nothing, and was arguably performing racial profiling. This was awful police work here.

But here is another aspect to this: Yanez lied to Castile. Yanez did NOT pull Castile over for a broken tail light. In fact, how many times do cops pull people over for broken tail lights? While it probably happens, I would be willing to bet it is cops fishing for trouble more often than not. They aren't doing it for public safety reasons, unless their supervisors go on a broken tail light quotas bender.

If cops want to pull somebody over to alert them to a busted tail light, that is fine. But it shouldn't be necessary to see a license and registration for that. Informing them is as much for their own benefit as it is for the public safety. Let them know, let them go.

Cops, especially uniformed cops, need to be honest at all times.

THE MIDDLE:

Here is the transcript of what happened next, from CNN:

9:05:38 p.m. -- Yanez asked for Castile's driver's license and proof of insurance.

9:05:48 p.m. -- Castile provided Yanez with his proof of insurance card.

9:05:49 - 9:05:52 p.m. -- Yanez looked at Castile's insurance information and then tucked the card in his pocket.

9:05:52 - 9:05:55 p.m. -- Castile told Yanez: "Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me." Before Castile completed the sentence, Yanez interrupted and replied, "Okay" and placed his right hand on the holster of his gun.

9:05:55 - 9:06:02 p.m. -- Yanez said "Okay, don't reach for it, then." Castile responded: "I'm... I'm ... [inaudible] reaching...," before being again interrupted by Yanez, who said "Don't pull it out." Castile responded, "I'm not pulling it out," and Reynolds said, "He's not pulling it out."
Yanez screamed: "Don't pull it out," and pulled his gun with his right hand. Yanez fired seven shots in the direction of Castile in rapid succession. The seventh shot was fired at 9:06:02 p.m. Kauser did not touch or remove his gun. 

Some people have made the argument that Castile was trying to follow Yanez's initial instruction, asking for Castile's driver's license. The problem with this analysis is when a cop tells you to stop reaching for something, you stop reaching period.

According to the autopsy, Castile had THC in his system, which is typical for marijuana users. This might have slowed Castile's reaction time in responding to Yanez's instructions.

In Castile's defense, cops like Yanez need to be more aware of when they have given conflicting instructions. However, Castile's admission to having a gun on him changed everything, and Castile should have expected that knowledge could have made Yanez nervous.

Finally, was it really necessary for Yanez to unload his firearm into Castile? Fire one shot, then take at least a moment to see what happens.

IN SUMMARY:

We have many things that could be fixed here that might have prevented this situation. Among them:

1. Police "fishing trips" need to end. Unnecessary encounters between cops and the public need to stop, especially when they are strictly excuses to find criminals, but without any real basis for suspicion other than skin color or ethnic persuasion.

2. A broken tail light should NEVER be used as an excuse by police to see someone's license, registration, or insurance. The encounter should be, "Excuse me sir, you have a broken tail light. You need to get that fixed. Have a nice day." The only reason to see a person's documents for a broken tail light is #1 above, which also needs to stop.

3. Uniformed police need to be completely honest with the public at all times. When uniformed cops lie, they breed distrust, which makes their own job more difficult. Honesty may not keep something like this from happening, but it would help police when the public sees tragedies like this, because the public would know the cop was at least being honest with the suspect.

4. A police officer should never unload a firearm into a suspect, unless the first shot hit and had no effect, or if the suspect is presenting a clear and present danger to the public or the officer. This was NOT the case here.

5. The fact Castile ignored Yanez's last command for his first command shows that Castile was either stupid or under the effect of marijuana. Ultimately, every civilian is responsible for the end result of their encounter with a police officer when they do not follow the officer's LAST order to the letter.

6. Always make sure your tail lights are working. It may sound silly, but Yanez wouldn't have had an excuse to pull over Castile, other than to confront him as a robbery suspect, for which Yanez didn't have sufficient cause.

Ultimately, justice was done here when Yanez was fired. But if we treat that as the end of the story, then Castile died in vain.