You are right, it has been a long day. And more times than I can count, Ive had to watch unarmed citizens be gunned down, sometimes hands were up (how did that work for castile?), and sometimes they were actually running away. We can then add the number of deaths that have occurred in jails, when no one saw anything yet, people locked up for very minor offenses commit “suicide”(sandra bland). Suddenly when people of color want to hold officers accountable for their actions, it is suddenly a problem.
When people want to defend officers behaviors, they always pick the Mike Brown case, while conveniently skipping over the fact while the officer was cleared, the the DOJ found that Ferguson police department was rife with racism and profiling. You’ve conveniently skip over all the other cases where officers clearly behaved badly(John Crawford, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, to name a very few . Lets not forget, we’ve been screaming about this for years, but its just coming to light because of video.
You can have a conversation but there’s not much chance of it being a productive one, if there aren’t agreed on facts.
Castile was a CCL holder, armed, and wasn’t holding his hands up when he was shot. He was reaching for his wallet, far as I’ve read.
Being in Texas at the time, the Sandra Bland case was something I read of in the Houston Chronicle for weeks. While I’m not in the mental health field, I recall that she had some issues and that there was a problem with the people that she called. Problem as in whether they were willing to come bail her out. Whether her problems were enough to push her to suicide, I’m sure we could find some paid mental health professionals to say both yea and nay.
That BLM isn’t skipping over any of these cases, that it’s the media number that they believe might make the case that statistics can’t, is more the problem than any that I’m ignoring.
Castile was DRIVING HIS CAR!!! He was stopped for a taillight out. How the heck was he supposed to “walk away” while sitting in the driver’s seat of his car? He was reaching for his ID because the “police officer” had just ASKED for it! He had informed the officer that he had a concealed carry licensed gun.
How do you think it would have gone if he had driven off–since he couldn’t “walk away”–or REFUSED to reach for his license and registration? Then he would have been shot for “resisting” or “fleeing.” There was simply nothing he could have done to prevent that incompetent racist murderer from shooting him.
Walked away. As in survived their encounter with police.
As to this…
… there’s a little you’ve left out - exactly when and how he told the officer. His girlfriend has been quoted as saying:
“As he’s reaching for his back pocket wallet, he lets the officer know: ‘Officer, I have a firearm on me,’” she said. “I begin to yell, ‘But he’s licensed to carry.’ After that, (the officer) began to take off shots.”