That’s a bold claim. If we watch the video, we can see the officer repeatedly saying “stay away from the gun.” It’s not clear what’s happening, but I can at least say I don’t know for sure what did in this tragic case.
The officer panicked. Whether he saw something he deemed suspicious or not, he was clearly not trained or ready to deal with the situation at hand.
We need to stop excusing deaths. Period.
He asked for proof of insurance and ID, and then once Mr. Castile informed him of his weapons permit, Yanez said "don’t pull it out". However, to someone who isn't intending on pulling out his concealed-carry weapon, "don't pull it out" does not adequately and unambiguously signal "stop moving". Mr. Castile was obeying the command to show his ID and also had acknowledged the order not to pull out his gun. Yanez did not even entertain the possibility that Castile might not be reaching for a gun -- and the phraseology Yanez used is indicative of that. Had Yanez wanted Castile to stop moving altogether, he should have issued an unambiguous command to that effect; such as "stop moving" or "hands on the dashboard" or "put your hands out the window now".
Yanez got himself all worked up and panicked before even making contact with the people in the car, issued verbal commands that were obeyed to the letter, shot up a compliant person, and then gave weird excuses about the smell of marijuana during questioning. Yes, someone in Castile's position could have stopped moving altogether when hearing "don't pull it out", but it really shouldn't be up to people stopped by police to try to reverse-engineer an officer's intentions and de-escalate the situation to avoid being shot by a nervous policeman. Obeying commands should be sufficient to not get shot up.
Regardless this is all us trying to put ourselves in that situation when none of us were in it, the videos don’t conclusively show what he was doing, and the officer wasn’t worked up / nervous from the start – he started off very calm.
We can only speculate on the situation, without living it and fully seeing it how can we judge one way or the other? Clearly there’s a larger problem with so many black people in prison and killed by cops in this conntey, but to do justice you have to look at every situation individually.
The escalation happens in about 5 seconds from "don't reach for it man" to rapid-fire shooting. Castille's demeanor is not at all threatening yet Yanez stated that he thought Castille didn't care about human life because there was a marijuana smell in the car and Castille's daughter was also in the car.
That said, cops are asked to do a difficult job and to enforce bad laws that pit them in a war against certain communities. The laws need to change, then fewer police and civilians will die needlessly.
Then we end up with not only dead civilians but also dead cops because some angry individual decided to ambush and kill the nearest representative of the boys in blue.
This like as not kills decent people who wanted to help their community and as a nice side effect makes cops more fearful and therefore MORE likely to shoot more innocent people which riles up the populace and makes them more likely to shoot cops.
The only way to short circuit this bad day is for federal authorities to punish the cops that communities wont. Unfortunately with the current administration that is laughably unlikely. Up next a bunch more dead people.
In fact, he had his seatbelt on. He did the right thing and even let the officer know he was legally allowed to carry a gun.
Nobody thought he was reaching for a gun, except (maybe) the dangerously unhinged officer who shot him.
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-...
> Jack Dolance, an attorney for the Williams’ family, said that how and why Mr. Mader was fired “is pretty clear evidence of their policy and that the way they feel [the shooting of Mr. Williams] should have been handled. Not only do they think he should have been shot and killed, but shot and killed more quickly. "
What in reading between the lines for why they acted the way they did is money. My guess is the city administration believes a shot and possibly dead police officer would cost them x monies and that a black man holding a gun doesn't have much of a recourse especially if he is dead.