Thomas Knapp on what he calls “The Castile Doctrine” … the police being held to far lower standards than ordinary citizens:
On June 16, a jury acquitted St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez of all charges in the 2016 killing of motorist Philando Castile. That acquittal was, in a sense, also a death sentence — not for Yanez, but for future motorists unfortunate enough to encounter cops like him.
No, this is not a “bad cop” story. It’s a sad tale and I actually feel sorry for Yanez. But the facts are what they are.
Yanez killed Castile. The killing was caught on video and neither Yanez nor his attorneys denied it.
His defense (that he feared for his life) was based on ridiculous grounds relating to the smell of cannabis and the presence of a child (“I thought, I was gonna die, and I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five year old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing, then what, what care does he give about me?”).
I find his justification to be astonishing … how can a man who thinks like this have ever been trusted with a gun and a badge?
Castile had informed Yanez that he possessed a concealed weapon and a permit for it, and was following Yanez’s orders to produce the permit when Yanez panicked and fired.
Key word: Panicked. His fear wasn’t justified. It wasn’t reasonable. It was unthinking and irrational. That made him culpably negligent in the killing.
[…]
The jury, in relieving him of the consequences of that failure, continued a sad tradition of holding law enforcement officers to a lesser standard of conduct than ordinary Americans. In doing so, they made the world a safer place for cops who shouldn’t be cops — and a more dangerous place for the rest of us.
US law generally holds civilian gun owners to much higher standards in cases like this than they ever seem to expect their own law enforcement officers to meet. A civilian who shot a driver in a similar situation would be lucky to only be facing manslaughter charges, but might well be convicted of first degree murder. A cop? Every extenuating circumstance is given full weight by both judge and jury. A person with no formal training is expected (and required) to be cool, calm, and collected under unexpected extreme stress, while a trained officer is given a pass for “panic” and irresponsible gunplay. Where’s the justice?
Update, 27 June: Even more puzzling is the virtual silence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) over this judicial killing:
These are gruesomely interesting times in the American gun debate. The footage of Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez killing motorist Philando Castile wasn’t enough to convict him in a court of law, but it’s no less damning for that. The more these videos pile up, the harder it gets to rationalize American police forces’ objectively insane collective death count.
The circumstances of Castile’s death are particularly enraging for gun rights activists — or, rather, they ought to be. Castile calmly informed Yanez he was legally armed, just as he should have; Yanez freaked out and, seconds later, pumped seven bullets into the car. By rights, many have observed, the NRA should be leading marches through the Twin Cities. Instead it’s saying and doing bugger all. Not a good look.
On the other side of the great divide, the gun control movement is almost in hibernation — and understandably so. Theirs is a tough climb at the best of times; with a Republican House and Senate it’s a sheer cliff.
Although many similar comments have been made on several posts related to the Castile incident, I read one yesterday that puts the subject in appropriate context. Unfortunately, after an extensive search today, I’ve not been able to put my finger on it, so please forgive the paraphrasing.
The commenter was a long-time CCW permit holder, who was also an admittedly frequent violator of speed limits. The commenter, obviously still alive, credited his continued vertical status to a common-sense strategy for being pulled over for a traffic stop while carrying a concealed weapon.
When pulled over, he immediately places both hands out the window of his vehicle in full view of the officer. When the officer approaches, he immediately discloses that he is a CCW permit holder and informs the officer of the weapon’s location, then asks the officer how to proceed.
He reports that while the responses to this strategy have varied widely in his frequent history of traffic stops, never once did the situation escalate to anything even remotely tense. As a side benefit, the officer’s appreciation of the commenter’s professionalism regarding the CCW, negated the traffic violation more than once.
Of my colleagues who have attended CCW permit classes, the advice for keeping hands in plain view (10 & 2, or out the window) has been universal.
Any debate or disagrement regarding police procedure or civil rights belongs in the courtroom, not at the side of the road during a traffic stop.
This is not to absolve Yanez of being poorly trained and panicking, nor to place the entire blame on Castile, but to quote a failed recent president (they both) “acted stupidly.”
Comment by Junk Science Skeptic — June 24, 2017 @ 14:01
Thanks for the summary. As being a CCW here in Canada is extremely rare, we don’t tend to think about how that might change how you’d interact with others under those circumstances. I’m far from being a hoplophobe, but I still found it startling to see people carrying weapons in ordinary life away from specific contexts where weapons normally “belong”.
Comment by Nicholas — June 25, 2017 @ 10:42