And you are absolutely wrong.
mmm
Yanez had asked for both, as is typical of a traffic stop, but only received the contents of the glove box (or wherever the registration and insurance card were). Castille was attempting to produce his license, which was still in his pocket.
I believe the former officer said something along the lines of ‘he had a wide-set nose’ or something. Like I said, thin ice.
Maybe, but the fact is that it’s safer nowadays to be a cop than it’s been in eons. According to nleomf.org (that’s the National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial Fund, for those who don’t want to click through), 669 police have been killed in the line of duty in the past 5 years (2012-2016). That’s just under 134 per year.
Before the past 5 years, you’ve got to go all the way back to 1960 to find a single year when fewer than 134 police died in the line of duty. (And that was in a much smaller country, population-wise, with presumably way fewer cops.)
So what’s the deal about this? Why aren’t police acting like they’re way less at risk than they’ve been? Or have they as a profession made themselves safer through a conscious or unconscious policy of offloading the risk onto the population they’re supposed to be protecting?
That’s probably just the result of crime being down in general. Most cops are not shot during traffic stops, and it’s likely that the type of interaction which tends to produce shootings is down. But the likelihood of being shot in any specific type of interaction is probably unchanged.
Yes, and there are other additional metrics. As a general rule, making a move that could be perceived as an attempt to access a weapon is one of those. As a general rule, one should avoid reaching into pockets, compartments, behind your back, etc while in the presence of police, and if one has to, do so SLOWLY, perhaps while communicating one’s actions and intentions to the officer(s). Even then, it may not be enough to keep you safe.
There was a young man riding around with his girlfriend that got stopped by the FBI a while ago. One agent told him to get out of the car, another one told him to freeze. He was wearing a seatbelt, and when he went to take it off, so that he could exit the vehicle and comply with first officer’s command, the second officer shot him in the face for failing to comply with his command. They mistook him for a bank robber.
Sometimes you just get the shitty end of the deal, no matter what.
I agree with the recommendations for intense, focused training on de-escalation techniques.
I’m generally of the view that cops tend to hold an exaggerated view of the dangers they face, and act on that view with lethal consequences sometimes, but I don’t think that LoD deaths is a good metric for measuring their risks. The # of deaths could be falling just because they drive around in safer cars now, or get better medical attention more quickly when they’re shot now, as opposed to 30 years ago, or wear bullet proof vests more commonly. There are lots of things that could be affecting this number while their risk of being shot / attacked could be moving independently, perhaps even increasing.
You should read up on the difference between murder and manslaughter. Yanez was not absolved of his behavior: he was charged with, and tried for, manslaughter. This is a felony charge, and if found guilty, Yanez could have been sentenced to years in prison.
It may be worth noting that a “not guilty” verdict does not meant the jury thought he was innocent; it only means they were not certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was guilty as charged.
I checked the FBI’s stats on assaults against on-duty law-enforcement officers over the past few years, and they’ve held fairly steady:
[ul]
[li]2010: 53,469[/li][li]2011: 54,774[/li][li]2012: 52,901[/li][li]2013: 49,851[/li][li]2014: 48,315[/li][li]2015: 50,212[/li][/ul]
The vast majority of these assaults in each year were “personal weapons” (hands, feet, fists); that’s usually around 78 to 80 percent of the assaults in any given year. The rest of the time, the assaults were with firearms, knives, or “other types of dangerous weapons.”
So in the recent past, there were roughly 10,300 assaults per year against law-enforcement officers using dangerous weapons.
Information from RTFirefly’s link shows more than 900,000 law-enforcement officers serving in the U.S. now. I’m rounding wildly, but that means in a given year, a law-enforcement officer has a 1 in 90 chance of being assaulted with a dangerous weapon – not just grappled with or punched. I would bet those odds skew higher for certain geographic areas or job types.
Doesn’t excuse Yanez or his actions in the least, of course. It does make it a little easier to understand why a police officer would be on edge in certain situations, though.
No, it isn’t.
This incident is bad enough. Exaggeration doesn’t help.
Regards,
Shodan
OK, I must have missed that. I knew he handed Yanez something.
If a cop (who knows you have a firearm) is pointing a gun at you and screaming “don’t reach for it!” repeatedly, why on earth would you continue reaching for your driver’s license?
mmm
He didn’t really “continue” doing much.
The time between Castile saying he has a weapon and being shot to death is less than four seconds. Yanez tells him not to “pull it out” at 1:39 of the video, draws his gun at 1:41 and immediately starts shooting somewher between the 1:42 and 1:43 timestamp. **At no point was Yanez doing what you described **- pointing a gun at Castile and giving a command. Once the gun came out he started killing Castile.
Castile never had a chance.
Right. In his mind, he was complying. “Don’t reach for it!” “OK, right, got it, not reaching for it.” Blam blam blam.
Your take away point here is that the police are not your friend, no matter what color you (or they) are.
I usually side with the cop in most instances of shootings, but this one was clearly unjustified.
Was the suspect’s behavior causing the cop to be edgy? Yes. Was it enough to justify shooting? Definitely not.
Just another example of why it’s entirely reasonable for many or most black people (and many others) to view police officers as unpredictable and potentially deadly enemies, and not as allies, nor as trustworthy, nor as defenders of the community, even when only a minority of police officers mistreat black people.
And if many or most black people see law enforcement this way, it’s not at all hard to see why many might be more likely to believe that ‘traditional’ paths to success (e.g. education, hard work and ingenuity in business, etc.) are closed off to them. If society’s supposed defenders are their enemies, then maybe they aren’t really a part of the society.
I’ll add that I don’t have all the answers as to how to fix this, but this situation started long, long before black people were disproportionately represented in criminal statistics. Black people did not start this, and black people cannot end this or fix this.
By “this situation” I mean the situation in which law enforcement has been reasonably seen as dangerous enemies by black people in America – that has existed for as long as there have been police in America.
I think it’s a vicious-cycle situation, where high black crime induces cops to adopt a more severe approach towards black people, which then cause black people to behave shifty or more antagonistic towards cops, which then makes the cycle worse.
The ideal thing would be for both sides to reduce the tension/anxiety of a traffic stop, etc. But even just one side defusing things, would make the whole thing defuse somewhat.
But this started long before there was any “high black crime”. Black men were stereotyped as animalistic, lustful, violent, and dangerous during slavery – and during slavery, white men raping black women and white-on-black violence were far, far more common than the reverse. This stereotype was based on nothing but the perceived need to justify slavery, and law enforcement has been treating black people as if they were less human ever since, though the level and frequency of brutality has decreased.
So I call bullshit on your “both sides” talk. There’s nothing that the vast majority of black people, who are peaceful and law-abiding, can or should do to improve this. There is something, on the other hand, that the vast majority of police officers (most of whom do not mistreat people) can do – they can stop complying with the blue wall; report their co-workers when they witness mistreatment, even to the media if their chain of command won’t respond; they can testify honestly to investigators about the bad behavior they witness; etc. Bad cops can only be bad when the good cops they work with choose not to try their best, up to and including informing the media when their chain of command isn’t cutting it, to stop the bad cops from mistreating people. Serpico should be the bare minimum standard, not the best we can hope for, and cops who don’t meet that standard shouldn’t be considered “good cops” by society.
You got that right, nice summation.