A day after Alton Sterling’s shooting, July 6, a police officer named Jeronimo Yanez fatally shot an African-American man named Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. This occurrence is being treated as an act of police brutality and racial injustice and is one of a rising number of similar events to occur in the past two years.
Yanez and another police officer, Joseph Kauser, had pulled over Castile for a broken taillight. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and his four-year-old daughter were in the car as well. Reynolds took a video of the incident on her cell phone which she uploaded shortly after the Castile’s death.
In the video, when the officers approach the car, Castile explicitly tells them that he has a gun on him, for which he has a concealed carry permit. A few moments later, when Castile reaches for his license and registration to hand to the officer, however, Yanez shoots him four times.
“I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand off it,” the police officer says. The video clearly shows that Castile was not reaching for his gun, however. Castile’s daughter is wailing. Reynolds is also sobbing and saying, “Please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.”
Since the video was uploaded, many people have expressed their outrage. To begin with, Castile’s car did not even have a broken taillight. Leaked police dispatch audio reveals one of the officers saying, “The two occupants look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just ‘cause of the wide set nose.”
Since the shooting, many conservative news sources have claimed that Castile was in fact involved in an armed robbery; however, several fact-checking websites have confirmed that this is not true. The police dispatch reveals that the officer racially profiled Castile and then lied about his reason for pulling them over because he knew his initial reasoning was not justified.
When Castile’s mother, Valerie, arrived at the crime scene, she was not even allowed to speak to Reynolds or the four-year-old girl. She tried to find out where Castile had been taken, and when the police finally told her, she immediately rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. Even though he was already dead, the police still would not let her see him or identify him.
Although the NRA is widely known for its strong pro-gun messages, they have thus far declined to comment on gun rights with regards to the shooting of Philando Castile. As of December 2015, 61% of legal gun owners were white men; however, many incidents like this do not occur with white men. Castile’s gun was legal, but is it possible that his gun ownership was perceived differently than it would have had he belonged to the majority 61%?
In other words, would Philando Castile be dead if he was white? This is a question that many people are asking. It was clear that the officers were profiling him from the start as they only pulled him over because of his “wide set nose.” Did this profiling carry over so that when Castile reached for his license (which the officer asked him to take out), they assumed he was reaching for his gun?
In a post on their Facebook page, the NRA said, “As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race… The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated.”
Many people are disappointed that the NRA did not speak out on behalf of Castile, especially since they are strong supporters of people’s rights to carry firearms. These people, including NRA members, have taken to social media to criticize this organization for its silence. One man, Brad Groux, tweeted, “As a life member [of the NRA], please condemn the murder of Philando Castile, sooner rather than later. Licensed to carry, and no felony record.”
Philando Castile was loved within his community and many people across the world are shocked and angered by this news. He was a cafeteria workers who used to sneak extra graham crackers to the children to make them happy. He made sure to hug a child who was borderline autistic every day. In high school, he was a straight A student, and his criminal record only extended to minor traffic violations.
He certainly did not deserve to die at such a young age. Many find it troubling how many similar events have occurred recently, beginning last year with Michael Brown, then Eric Garner, and most recently ending with Alton Sterling, as well as a number of other cases that have not received as much attention.
Although people continue to disagree about the details of many of these cases, it is generally agreed that justice must prevail wherever and whenever it is deserved and the necessary actions must be taken to ensure that innocent people are never wrongfully killed.