Verdict of Philando Castile Police shooting: Not guilty

Just wait until we get more automation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXfh4hENKs

Absolutely. We've seen crime being disproportionately committed by certain people so it makes sense to be more alert and cautious when interacting with such people. Now I fully expect the excuses will fly but that does not negate reality.

Not really , if you have a gun and you tell the cop, you sit still with your hands clearly visible and let the cop guide you.

It´s not that hard and does not require a brain surgeon to figure out.

@mrbojangles25: he informed the cop that he had a gun. The cop told him to grab his license, and then shot him. The officer should have asked him to get out the car and surrender his weapon, and then checked his ccw. That's procedure, lots of people get pulled over while concealed carrying; just in this case the cop got antsy for no reason.

All the records show the victim was 100 compliant, friendly, and willing to follow instructions

Are you saying everywhere (in America) a CCW holder is pulled over, the cop makes the person exit the vehicle and relinquish his firearm?

But then you have a problem if the cop asks for your license or whatever they might ask for. Because how is he supposed to determine if you are reaching for that or a gun? Especially one who is stressed or nervous.

I keep my license on my when I am driving, but if the cop wants some papers about the car, they are in the small compartment in the dashboard. If I have told the cop that I also have a gun with me, how should he be able to determine what I am actually reaching for? Hey the gun might even be in there with the papers he wants to see.

Depends. Some cops are okay with CCW whereas others are outright hostile. Also, yes, sometimes an officer depending on his/her jurisdiction can ask a CCW holder to relinquish his firearm temporarily in duration of the traffic stop.

In my past experience officers asked if there were any firearms in the vehicle and if they were on the physical person ccws were checked and the officer made the person relinquish the weapon for the time being.

I am pretty sure the cop won't ask for anything that will make him fear for his safety.

So if you tell the cop you have a gun, i am sure that he will secure that first.

And even if ask for the license , you again wait for him to tell you what to do, all you do is say where the license is.

Not really, he told him several times before he shot not to move. So nice try mate.

Not always...?

It should have gone like this instead.

@horgen: Lol that guy is good

You see a huge difference there , first he did not say i have a gun, 2nd he is not a addict and as you can see on the video he has his hands visible all the time.

So while sure we can say yes that is how it should have gone, we can´t compare the 2 situations

Not to mention how when cops get called racists all the time, it probably makes them feel even more at odds with the public. They start treating civilians and neighbors like threats and combatants, and then we're surprised they murder people all the time. It doesn't help that we give them military equipment and tell them everybody's out to get them.

It was meant more to brighten the mood in this otherwise depressing thread. Not as a direct comparison. :)

Honestly, given what I seen in the video, I can see why the officer reacted the way he did. When you see enough police shooting videos with similar situation where the officer gives a command and get shot for his troubles then you can see where he's coming from. That was definitely poor judgement on the driver part (Sure, he did at least warned the officer that he had a firearm, but then he went full on stupid when he ignored the officers command of "don't reach for it then. Don't pull it out" by doing the complete opposite of what he was told while replying, based on what I heard,"I got to reach for it. I'm gonna have to pull it out". It even sound like Castile wife utter the words "Do not pull..." just prior to the shots fired, which indicates to me that he was indeed attempting reach for something)

The worse punishment for the officer I can think of would to remove him from the force (If he hasn't been already) as it appeared he also exercised poor judgement based on his testimony and also proven that his nerves aren't tough enough to do the job. If he really thought Castile was a wanted suspect then he should've told Castile from get-go the type of situation he really was in and then went from there...

Let the cop guide you so you're not executed in front of your family. Fail in anyway or if the cop is stressed out or feels a little fear and your life is gone. What a sad state of affairs

Let's just pretend for a second that this was routine, that any single one of us would have been shot if we had been in this exact same situation. Me in my Honda and you in your Jeep and this guy over here in his Acura: if we were all pulled over by any cop, informed him that we had a weapon on our person and a license to legally do so, and we somehow did any number of things wrong that gave a cop legal permission to shoot us dead...

...doesn't that mean we should be taking issue with the law or regulation itself? I mean we are yelling at the judge, jurors, the cop, lamenting the loss of this man, how the fiance is now alone and all that stuff but the law is still there.

I mean, how do we fix this? Do we make it so cops have to leave their guns in their cars? If you have a concealed weapon permit, should you get a sticker to put on your windshield or maybe a notification pops up when the cop types in your information so he is not surprised? Or maybe you just let people go if you find out they have a gun, honestly just let them go and talk to them at home.

What are you talking about? I've seen a video from inside the car right after the shooting, but I've seen none that show the cop approaching the car from her perspective before the encounter and during the shooting. That's what I mean. Do you have one?

A second mistrial has occurred where a white police officer shot dead an unarmed black motorist in Ohio two years ago.

Damn, that shit sounds worse than Philadro.

If a cop asks for your papers after you inform him you are armed, you don't move until you ask him explicitly how to go about it, and when you do move, you move extremely slowly and deliberately and tell him what you're doing.

I think there's blame on both sides of the isle here, it was a breakdown in communication. The driver made the assumption he was in the clear and made moves much more hastily than was proper in such context, and the cop was overly trigger happy. If he truly felt threatened, he should have drawn his weapon and rapidly retreated, keeping a bead while screaming for the guy to get his hands visible instead of immediately unloading. But I don't think it's a good idea to lay all the blame at the officer's feet, it's never so simple. These things happen from a combination of unfortunate circumstances.

Another new incident:

White St. Louis police officer shoots off-duty black officer

So much for "Blue Lives Matter".

That's the obvious lesson here, and also the obvious problem. If you can't follow an officer's direct orders with it being considered, "the right thing to do," that's a problem. A big one.

You can't expect all citizens to know secret rules like this (particularly in a situation in which they are already likely to be nervous), and then shrug your shoulders when the situation goes awry and say, "he shouldn't have done what the officer asked him to do."

If that's the takeaway here, we need to reexamine our policies.

This forum is generally anti-government (for the most part) yet there exists a large contingent who are okay with giving the police exorbitant powers, to the point where an officer on his nightly patrol can freely play judge, jury, and executioner with no repercussions. A strange dichotomy to say the least.

I don't carry a firearm, but I know you have to take courses prior to getting your CCW license. I would imagine these entail some lessons on etiquette in dealing with any law enforcement, and aside, common sense should dictate that even if a cop tells you to do something while armed, it should still be done exercising extreme caution and deliberateness.

I'm not saying the cop is faultless in this. The dashcam video shows that he started gunning down the dude extremely fast. Do I think he should have been convicted? I'm tending towards yes, but it's hard to say without knowing exactly what happened. We have the dashcam, and her phone footage from the immediate aftermath. Those are the only two recordings I'm aware of.

If I was pulled over while legally carrying a weapon, I would have told the cop before he had a chance to start with the broken backlight, and further I wouldn't have moved a muscle unless the cop told me to.

While the cop seems very nervous, it seems the guy moved and reached for whatever, after the cop told him to not reach for his weapon. It all happens in seconds, and its hard to judge from these videos. For example what the look on the guys face is, his bodylanguage and so on.

The cop also handled it wrong in my opinion. Instead of saying "don't reach for it, though" after the guy tells him he carries a gun, he should have told him to not move untill he says so.

While very tragic, I think both are at fault here. It seems like a classic clusterfuck.

Rape statistics (US)

In the US, only 34% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported. And out of the ones that are reported, only 4% lead to convictions. The US criminal justice system is biased against victims of rape and sexual assault.

Most of the people ignoring the facts are the ones rushing to the cop's defense. The evidence shows that Castile was obeying exactly what Yanez told him to do, and that Castile had done nothing wrong at all. This is what was agreed upon in the courtroom. The only reason Yanez was let off was because he falsely "believed" Castile to be a "threat". In the flawed US criminal justice system, the facts are irrelevant, but the only way to convict a police officer is to somehow disprove the cop's claim that he "believed" the victim was a threat, which places an enormous burden of proof on the prosecution, making a conviction almost impossible. The US criminal justice system is biased in favour of police.

You have to be ignorant or lacking or reading comprehension, maybe both. Talking about cops here. Do you not remember the story of that asian cop having raped several women and it only was taken seriously due to the amount of women? Took a long time for him to be brought to justice and had his first victims been taken seriously he probably wouldn't have made it to 13

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/21/us/oklahoma-city-officer-daniel-holtzclaw-rape-sentencing/index.html

Ignore cop apologists lie him, they live in lala land

NRA seems pretty silent considering a conceal and carry citizen was only exercising his rights, then shot and killed for it. Perhaps he doesn't fit their marketing demographic.

Everywhere is different and I'd imagine it has a lot to do with whom ever is being stopped and who is doing the stopping. Out here we are not required to reveal we are a CCW holder exercising his rights. Now I do not know if running your drivers license would reveal the person is a CCW holder but unless my weapon is being stored in the glove box with the insurance and registration forms, I'm most likely not saying anything.

Most of us aren't either blaming the victim or the cop here. We just want to see that the cop is held responsible to some degree as well.

You're also leaning towards that the cop should have been convicted. Unless I am mistaken, the only "punishment" the cop received was losing his job, something I doubt would happen if it wasn't for the media attention.

It is the fault of the US criminal justice system that only 4% of reported rapes lead to any convictions. This demonstrates that the US criminal justice system is biased in favour of rape suspects, not rape victims.

96% of rape suspects walk free. That's not "some". That's the overwhelming majority. This demonstrates that the US criminal justice system is heavily biased towards rape suspects, not rape victims.

You are supporting a victim culture and assuming all accused are guilty. Don't say you aren't because you are.

If that's what you think, then you must either be delusional or have terrible reading comprehension.

Polarizing. You guys shouldn't be new to this. :P

New account that uses a racial slur as a username, yeah not a troll at all

He's probably worse than a troll. Just an ass backwards racist.

Probably. This new board has attracted a lot of these new accounts with that type of agenda.

What excuse do you have for 96% of rape suspects walking free? Are you going to claim they're all "innocent"?

There are a variety of inherent problems associated with "rapes" which make it difficult to prosecute. First is the time taken in reporting said rape and the lack of physical evidence after said event occurred. Secondly, is having to deal with the false reports. In the majority of cases you will have a he-said she-said ordeal; indeed, establishing relationship status, prior sexual history, etc, creates a lot of questions. Having been to hospitals and taken reports, taken victims to a rape center, taken long and detailed statements, and dealt with this, it is by no means an easy process to go through nor a "slam dunk" for prosecutors/district attorneys.

Prior sexual history should be of no consequence to the case. Also false reports are not a major issue. Just an excuse used. However other crimes can also have long investigations.