Ex-con, illegally carrying a firearm – alarm is up. He needs to go to jail for carrying/brandishing the piece. He may be dangerous. He isn’t selling Girl Scout cookies from his grandma’s house.
We need to look at the expectations and culpability of both the cops and those who end up shot. In some cases, the cops probably should not have gotten into a position in which they felt they needed to fire. But we also need to consider what the person who was shot did (if anything) to put that cop in the emotional state necessary to do so. In so doing, we can begin to apportion blame.
@MichiganGeorgia Yea, I read too quickly and wrote too quickly. I don’t disagree with you.
I’m just frustrated because it’s become incredibly clear to me that we need a new Civil Rights Movement. The only thing that gives me a glimpse of some future hope is seeing photos of anti police brutality marches going on in cities nationwide. Marches that include many white and Latino participants of all ages, but especially the young. Maybe their generation will succeed where we’ve failed.
Gee, garland, your initial response in #206, before you edited it, was a lot less confrontational. Guess it’s to ok to respond to a previous post without getting accusations. Ok…
I should have posted more fully to start. There are some days when filters seem extraneous. I admire Diamond Reynolds so thoroughly that it is actually painful to see someone questioning her actions.
The woman streaming had just watched her boyfriend get shot for (as she says) reaching for the identification that the officer had asked for. Even if she asked and was given permission to tend to her boyfriend (which, really, she could have done nothing from that angle) why should she think that the cop wouldn’t shoot her too because she moved her hands to quickly or something else?
Her daughter was in the back seat. Maybe she didn’t want to leave her an orphan. There’s a reasonable chance that that’s would’ve happened if she tried to help her boyfriend.
The Minnesota cop’s lawyer said that the Latino officer was reacting to seeing the gun on the victim’s lap. The gun can be seen on his lap in the video.
There are reports that the car was stopped because Castile was suspected of being an armed robber who robbed a store with a gun a few days before.
There are reports that he did not have a permit to carry (this should be easy to check out as a public record).
Is there a body camera or dashboard camera showing what happened before the shooting?
The cop may be guilty, all I am saying is that no one yet knows and no one should assume anything until the full investigation is done.
》》 Not saying they’re entirely wrong but if there is such a thing as racial profiling, then the people who are profiled are going to be pulled over, searched, charged, and convicted at a higher rate than those who are not profiled making those “commit crime” statistics more than a little skewed.《《
I was under the impression that we were talking about a small percentage of cops who were gunning down blacks for 0 reasons other than the color of their skin. Now we are suggesting that a large enough segment of the cops profile blacks and arrest them at every opportunity, while letting huge numbers of whites (and other races) literally get away with murder? Enough to “skew the statistics” in whites’ favor?
The argument is circular. You say profiling causes the arrests and convictions, and it does. But the profile has to say something. Should we ban mentioning race in a profile? Then we can just have cops pull over every person driving a green Toyota and hope one person inside is still wearing the same clothes as the murderer, or has the stolen items in his backseat.
@TatinG --apparently, the officer told the dispatch that he was pulling Philando over because he “had a wide nose.” You can’t make this stuff up. Tragically.
Re the gun: I saw a freeze frame on a news link at some whack-job site and it could have been anything - it was just a dark shape which could have easily been the arm rest in between the passengers. It was a nice try, but no. If you can find a credible picture from a credible site, go for it.
Re the officer saying “I told him not to reach for the gun”: Again, nice try, but that’s not what the transcript says, per the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
I really fear to know the kinds of sources you’re using that tell you this. I think we live in two different media worlds. I live in the media world of the WSJ, NYTimes, and normal news outlets.
I am in awe at how much presence of mind she had to stream the incident and some of the questionings of her actions make me wonder if the questioners ever actually experienced having a gun pointed at them in anger and having to cope with it for even a moment…much less the extended ordeal she experienced.
That’s not even getting into the fact she was dealing with it after her SO was shot and dying and still having to be mindful the cop who shot him still had his gun pointed at her.
@TatinG, you’re entitled to your opinions, but not to misrepresent facts. Please educate us as to exactly where this gun on his lap can be seen in the video. I certainly can’t see it. The only things in his lap are his hands, his seat belt, and a whole lot of blood. I don’t see it reported anywhere. The cop’s lawyer didn’t even make that claim.
You didn’t really watch the video, did you? You just read this somewhere, right?
Because as far as I can tell, the gun in the lap exists only in some people’s vivid imaginations, as promulgated in the comments sections of a few dubious websites.
On the other hand, there’s no dispute that he was pulled over because his “wide-set nose” supposedly resembled a suspect’s. We all know what that means.
Profiling is wrong. No, my daughter, one of two Chinese girl on the soccer team, doesn’t look anything like the other Chinese girl. Just because someone is of a different race doesn’t mean that person looks like other people of that race. That’s just careless.