On July 6, 2016 Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer after being pulled over in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile was known as “Mr. Phil” to the students at J. J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, where he was employed as nutritional supervisor, and was a beloved member of the Twin Cities-area educational community. His girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter were present at the time of the shooting.
The officer had pulled Castile over under the pretext that his brake lights had gone out and had falsely suspected that Castile was the perpetrator in an armed robbery that had happened the previous week. Upon being pulled over, Castile alerted the officer that he had a registered firearm in his pocket. Legally, Castile was not required by law to alert the officer that he was carrying a firearm. Despite repeated attempts to dissuade the officer that he was not reaching for his firearm, the officer disregarded Castile’s warnings. When he reached for his wallet, Castile was shot multiple times at point-blank range. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the aftermath of the shooting on her Facebook. Reynold’s four-year-old daughter had seen all of the events transpire from the back seat of the car (Davis 1).
The Minnesota police officer who drew widespread protests after he shot and killed Philando Castile has been found not guilty after being charged with second-degree manslaughter.
After 27 hours of deliberation, the jury found St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty for manslaughter, as well as two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm, according to the Star Tribune.
The July 2016 shooting captured nationwide attention after Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s fiancée, live-streamed the aftermath on Facebook. The image was grisly, showing a black man’s slumped, bloodied body – the result of yet another police shooting in America.
"He killed my boyfriend," Reynolds said. She claimed that police had opened fire when Castile reached for his driver’s license, as an officer requested: "He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm."
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… Reynolds said Castille reached for his driver’s license, after reportedly letting an officer know he had a legal gun. (Castile had a concealed carry permit, according to family.) The officer then allegedly opened fire.
"I told him not to reach for it," an officer claimed in the Facebook video. "I told him to get his hand out."
"You told him to get his ID, sir — his driver’s license," Reynolds replied. "Oh, my God. Please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that."
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The lawyer representing Yanez told the Associated Press that Yanez "was reacting to the actions of the driver. This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun." But Yanez's attorney did not elaborate on how, exactly, Castile displayed his weapon. Officials confirmed that a handgun was recovered from the scene.
A police radio call offered more details into why Castile was pulled over to begin with. The officer said Castile and his girlfriend "just look like people that were involved in a robbery." He added that Castile "looks more like one of our suspects, just 'cause of the wide-set nose."
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Castile’s final traffic stop was far from his first. According to an NPR analysis, it was in fact his 46th stop —almost all of which were related to fairly minor traffic violations. To critics, Castile’s history shows one of the massive racial biases in policing: Black people are, in many jurisdictions, more likely to be stopped for traffic offenses. And with each of those stops, there’s a risk that the police encounter will escalate — potentially leading to a deadly shooting. When you put those two facts together, it helps explain one reason there are such big racial disparities in police use of force (Lopez 1-2).
Several members of the Castile family screamed profanities and cried after the verdict was announced, despite warnings from the judge that everyone in the courtroom should remain composed.
“Let me go!” yelled Castile’s mother, Valerie.
The families of Castile and Yanez were escorted out of separate courtroom exits. At least 13 officers were present in the small courtroom.
Outside court, Valerie Castile said she was disappointed in the state of Minnesota, “Because nowhere in the world do you die from being honest and telling the truth.
“The system continues to fail black people,” she said. “My son loved this city and this city killed my son and the murderer gets away! Are you kidding me right now?
“We’re not evolving as a civilization, we’re devolving. We’re going back down to 1969. What is it going to take?”
The jury was composed of eight men and four women, including one black man and one black woman.
Jurors deliberated 27 hours and heard two weeks of testimony about the July 6 traffic stop, in which Yanez pulled over a car driven by Castile, 32, with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter as passengers.
An audio recording captured Castile telling Yanez he had a gun in the car, and the officer telling Castile not to reach for it. Seconds later, Yanez opened fire.
Prosecutors portrayed Yanez as a nervous officer who lost control of his traffic stop. He was too quick to pull the trigger after learning Castile had a gun, based on an unreasonable suspicion that he was a robbery suspect, they said.
Yanez, a St. Anthony officer, testified he feared for his life because Castile put his hand on his firearm, not his wallet or identification papers, and was pulling the gun from his pocket.
“I didn’t want to shoot Mr. Castile,”Yanez testified. “That wasn’t my intention. I thought I was going to die.”
Yanez’s lawyers alleged Castile had been smoking marijuana the day of the shooting, which they said affected his judgment.
Castile was bleeding heavily in the Facebook video but managed to say he wasn’t reaching for his gun, which he had a permit to carry. His girlfriend said Castile was reaching for his ID in his back pocket when he was shot.
Castile’s fully loaded gun was found in his shorts pocket, Ramsey County prosecutors said.
Reynolds issued a statement Friday, saying Castile was pulled over because he had “a wide nose,” like a robbery suspect who was being sought.
“He did nothing but comply with Officer Yanez’s instructions to get his driver’s license. He was seat belted and doing as he was told, when he was shot by Officer Yanez who fired seven shots into the vehicle where my …. daughter and I also sat. It is a sad state of affairs when this type of criminal conduct is condoned simply because Yanez is a policeman. God help America” (Ellis and Kirkos 1-3).
“He [Yanez] was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this,” Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments. “And that’s his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile.”
Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots.
Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation. “If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that’s the last thing they would say,” Mr. Paulsen said.
Mr. Gray, the defense lawyer, said Officer Yanez had to react quickly to what he believed was an imminent threat. He said Officer Yanez smelled marijuana, believed that Mr. Castile matched the description of a recent robbery suspect and saw him grabbing a gun.
“We have him ignoring his commands. He’s got a gun. He might be the robber. He’s got marijuana in his car,” Mr. Gray told jurors. “Those are the things in Officer Yanez’s head.”
Officer Yanez did not tell Mr. Castile about the robbery suspicions, only that his brake light was out. But Mr. Gray said that this approach made sense, and that Officer Yanez had acted reasonably given his training and what he knew that night.
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At Officer Yanez’s trial, in this small courtroom in downtown St. Paul, defense lawyers made repeated mention of Mr. Castile’s and Ms. Reynolds’s use of marijuana. The drug was found in Mr. Castile’s car after the shooting, and Mr. Gray said that Mr. Castile had been under the influence of marijuana and delayed in his reactions at the time of the shooting.
“We’re not saying that Philando Castile was going to shoot Officer Yanez,” Mr. Gray said. “What we’re saying is that he did not follow orders. He was stoned.”
But Mr. Paulsen, the prosecutor, said that version of events was contradicted by video. He said footage showed that Mr. Castile was driving normally, pulled over quickly and was alert and courteous when talking to Officer Yanez. He accused the defense of blaming the victim (Smith 1-3).
Philando Castile's trouble with traffic stops began when he still had his learner's permit. He was stopped a day before his 19th birthday.
From there, he descended into a seemingly endless cycle of traffic stops, fines, court appearances, late fees, revocations and reinstatements in various jurisdictions.
Court records raise big questions: Was Castile targeted by police? Or was he just a careless or unlucky driver?
An NPR analysis of those records shows that the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb, was stopped by police 46 times and racked up more than $6,000 in fines. Another curious statistic: Of all of the stops, only six of them were things a police officer would notice from outside a car — things like speeding or having a broken muffler.
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Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University …, said Castile was the "classic case" of what criminologists have called "net widening," or the move by local authorities to criminalize more and more aspects of regular life.
"It is in particular a way that people of color and the poor are victimized on a daily basis," Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Many times … the system leaves citizens with no good choices — having to pick, for instance, whether to pay a fine or pay for car insurance.
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Castile's driving problems often appeared to be triggered by something small — a problem with his license plate or blocking an intersection. When he couldn't keep up with the fines, his license would get suspended, and he'd keep driving.
One six-year period in particular — from 2006 to 2012 — stands out. Castile was stopped 29 times. Sometimes he was fined $270, sometimes $150, but it kept adding up. He soon amassed more than $5,000 in fines.
"I am just baffled, and I've been pulled over in the same vehicle my brother died in," Castile's sister said. Allyza Castile thinks it was her brother's dreadlocks and the big sedans he loved to drive — like the Oldsmobile he was in — that made him stand out.
"I've been pulled over in that car for three or four times for the same exact reason — supposedly a broken taillight," she said. "When you run the plates, his name comes up, so I've been harassed driving his vehicle myself. So I know that they harass my brother."
During some periods of his life, Castile was sometimes able to emerge from a mountain of fines.
From 2012 to late 2014 — like clockwork — he paid off fine after fine, some of them more than $500 a month.
"He was trying to make it right," said Beverly Castile, Philando's aunt. "And it was right. He paid off all his tickets, got his license back and everything else. It was done right."
But about three months after he was done with probation, he was stopped again — for "improper display of original plate." By January of this year, his license was suspended, but he quickly paid $275 to get it back (Peralta and Corley 1-4).
The Minnesota police officer who was acquitted in last year’s fatal shooting of black motorist Philando Castile will receive $48,500 as he leaves the suburban department that employed him at the time of the killing, according to a separation agreement announced Monday.
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His annual salary at the time of the July 6, 2016, shooting was more than $72,600, not including overtime pay, according to documents released by the city.
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Yanez’s acquittal led to days of protests, including one in St. Paul that shut down Interstate 94 for hours and ended with 18 arrests. At a recent city council meeting, residents of St. Anthony called on the city’s mayor to resign.
After the trial, Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city, precluding a wrongful death lawsuit (Forlitti 1-2).
The Minnesota woman who live-streamed the aftermath of boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by police has settled with two cities for $800,000, the city of St. Anthony said Wednesday.
Neither Diamond Reynolds nor her daughter, who was 4 at the time, were injured during the traffic stop that led to Castile’s death, but Reynolds was handcuffed and she and her daughter were held by Roseville police after the shooting.
Reynolds had filed a claim in Ramsey County District Court, seeking money and “other relief” for emotional distress and false arrest (McLaughlin 1).
[If you wish, you may view the two horrific videos of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. I have included them because I believe that in this instance words alone do not convey the enormity of what transpired. Paste the following on Google.]
Works cited:
Davis, Rhys. “July 6, 2016: Philando Castile Is Killed by Police.” Zinn Education Project. Net. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/philando-castile-killed-by-police/
Ellis, Ralph and Kirkos, Bill. “Officer Who Shot Philando Castile Found Not Guilty on All Counts.” CNN, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/philando-castile-trial-verdict/index.html
Forlitti, Amy. “Cop Who Killed Philando Castile To Be Paid $48,500 in Buyout.” USA Today, July 11, 2017. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/07/11/cop-who-killed-philando-castile-paid-48-500-buyout/466918001/
Lopez, German. “Philando Castile Minnesota Police Shooting: Officer Cleared of Manslaughter Charge.” Vox, updated June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12116288/minnesota-police-shooting-philando-castile-falcon-heights-video
McLaughlin, Eliott C. “Girlfriend of Philando Castile Settles with 2 Cities for $800,000.” CNN, November 29, 2017. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/us/philando-castile-shooting-diamond-reynolds-settlement/index.html
Peralta, Eyder and Corley, Cheryl. “The Driving Life and Death of Philando Castile.” NPR, July 15, 2016. Net. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/15/485835272/the-driving-life-and-death-of-philando-castile
Smith, Mitch. “Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile.” The New York Times, June 16, 2017. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/police-shooting-trial-philando-castile.html
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