Watching The Cops
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Title: The Philando Castile shooting: Why was it reasonable for the cop to be nervous but not for Castile to be?
Source:
HotAir
URL Source: http://hotair.com/archives/2017/06/ ... nable-cop-nervous-not-castile/
Published: Jun 21, 2017
Author: Allahpundit
Post Date: 2017-06-21 20:34:19 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 4408
Comments: 15
An excellent point by Julian Sanchez that deserves wider exposure. — Julian Sanchez (@normative) June 21, 2017 — Julian Sanchez (@normative) June 21, 2017 Yanez, the cop, had police training and years of experience to guide him in a situation like that. Castile, the civilian, had nothing except his wits. Go watch the dashcam video and you’ll see it’s Castile who’s clearly the more nervous of the two when the encounter begins yet he behaves perfectly reasonably, volunteering to Yanez that he has a weapon. Obviously he’s trying to alert the cop to the fact that there’s a gun in the car for fear that Yanez will spot it on his own and panic. Then he tries to comply with Yanez’s command to present his license and registration and Yanez, unreasonably, panics anyway and starts pumping shots into him. To repeat a question I posed yesterday: Why would a criminal intent on killing a cop tell the cop first that he has a gun? Why didn’t Castile’s entirely reasonable behavior earn him enough of the benefit of the doubt for Yanez to at least keep his finger on the trigger instead of pulling it? Imagine, says Sanchez, that this same confrontation had happened in the parking lot of a shooting range between two civilians. There’s a fender-bender, one guy reaches into his car for his insurance — and the other guy blows him away before seeing what he was reaching for, fearing unreasonably that he was grabbing his weapon. “Would anyone take [the shooter’s] somber pronouncement that ‘I had to make a SPLIT SECOND decision’ as anything but a pathetic rationalization?” asks Sanchez. The question answers itself. Yanez was held to a lower standard even though, thanks to his training, logically he should have been held to a higher standard. A truth bomb via David French: Juries are perfectly willing to let cops kill unreasonably. The de facto standard applied in court isn’t reasonableness, it’s fear. So long as the cop sincerely feared he might be shot, it doesn’t matter if his fear was reasonable. That’s how Yanez, whose panic was so intense that he was still screaming in terror and horror minutes after Castile had died, ended up walking. Legally, it’s not enough for an officer to show that he was actually afraid for his life. He has to show that “a reasonably prudent person” would also have the same fear. Clever defense lawyers twist this standard into a line of argument that goes something like this: The officer was afraid, and he can explain to you the reasons why he was afraid. Therefore, it was reasonable that he was afraid. Reminding juries of Sanchez’s point, that the civilian also reacts under intense stress in an encounter with the police, might get them to see French’s point more clearly. Viewed in isolation, a cop will almost always get the benefit of the doubt on reasonableness because the public knows his job is dangerous and doesn’t want to tie his hands when his instinct is telling him that he needs to use lethal force to defend himself. Viewed comparatively, though, that benefit of the doubt is harder. Did Castile, the victim, behave reasonably? If so, Yanez’s intense panic and decision to shoot before determining that Castile was in fact reaching for a gun seems much less reasonable. That verdict may have turned out differently if, legally, more emphasis were placed on weighing the reasonableness of the victim’s behavior before considering the officer’s. Failing that, you could introduce a “reasonable police officer” standard for cases involving police shootings. Do police typically blast away at drivers who happen to have a lawfully owned gun in the car with them, particularly when the driver politely informs them of that up front? That question answers itself too. By the way, as of 5 p.m. ET, still no statement from the NRA about the result in the Yanez trial. Is this a civil-rights organization or a police union? A law-abiding gun owner was killed unreasonably despite his best efforts to follow the law. How do you square the NRA’s traditional rhetoric about the Second Amendment being a crucial protection for American citizens from oppressive state force with their silence this week after a cop spazzed out and shot an innocent man to death for having a gun? Poster Comment: Was Yanez screaming and crying out for minutes after senselessly murdering Castille just a crafty way to get on video as a scaredy-cop (i.e. a scaredy-cat cop) so that he could rely on such a legal defense in court. …while the conduct of the victim is held to an oddly higher standard: "Oh, he should have known NOT to keep pulling out his wallet…" Which seems rather backwards. Civilians get nervous when they're stopped by police. Especially when the police are shouting! When I saw that palpable panic, I immediately knew why he was acquitted. The unwritten law trumped the statutes on the books. The unwritten law is simple: When an officer is afraid, he’s permitted to shoot. Juries tend to believe that proof of fear equals proof of innocence…
If so, it worked.
I'd recommend to any cop that if they shoot someone they should scream and cry out, perhaps pretend to faint from fright, just so they can use the 'Fraidy-Cop defense in court if they have to.
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#4. To: Tooconservative (#0)
(Edited)
Straw man. Castile's behavior was not reasonable. We're all asking ourselves, "Why didn't he just listen to the cop?"
Officer Jeronimo Yanez's claim that he saw Castile drawing a gun is utterly implausible. Philando Castile Video Shows a Cop Who Panicked and Killed an Innocent Man To believe Yanez, you would have to believe that Castile, a law-abiding, peaceful cafeteria manager at a local elementary school who had a concealed-carry permit, was for some unknown reason bent on murdering the police officer who had pulled him over because of a faulty brake light. You would also have to believe that Castile, having decided to shoot Yanez, thought it was a good idea to calmly announce, "Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me." A more innocent explanation is that Castile meant to hand the gun over to Yanez for the duration of the traffic stop, which led to a fatal misunderstanding. But that explanation is inconsistent with the repeated assurances from Castile and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, that he was not, in fact, reaching for his gun. "I wasn't reaching for it" was one of the last things Castile said as he sat, mortally wounded, in his car. So the only possibility, if you believe Yanez, is that Castile was bent on violence. Far more likely is that Yanez told the truth in his initial account of the shooting: He believed Castile was reaching for a gun, but he never saw the weapon. Beginning immediately after the shooting (as you can hear in the dashcam video), Reynolds has consistently said Castile was actually reaching for his wallet to retrieve his driver's license, which Yanez had requested along with his insurance card. If you believe Reynolds (and Castile), Yanez made a mistake. Whether that mistake was excusable depends on whether Yanez reasonably believed that shooting Castile was the only way to avoid death or serious injury. Yanez may indeed have believed that, but his belief was not reasonable. The officer's only basis for fearing Castile was the latter's purported resemblance to a robbery suspect (which was the real reason for the traffic stop). But that resemblance consisted entirely of commonly conjoined features: dark skin, a wide nose, dreadlocks, and glasses. Jeffrey Noble, an expert on police procedure, testified during Yanez's trial that the officer had "absolutely no reason" to view Castile as a criminal suspect. That initial misconception evidently colored everything that followed, even though Castile was polite, cooperative, and forthcoming in letting Yanez know about the gun. Even if Yanez had good reason to fear Castile, Noble said, he could have addressed the threat he perceived by instructing the driver to put his hands on the dashboard, which he never did. Yanez also could haver stepped back from the car window to the area between the front and back seats, which would have given him more space and time to react. Yanez did not take those precautions because he was not thinking clearly. Watching the dashcam video, which shows a calm exchange escalating into gunfire in just a few seconds, you see a man in full-blown panic.
#7. To: Deckard (#5)
Yanez crapped his panties and shot an innocent gunowner to death, endangering an unarmed woman and her toddler child with no regard for their safety. It's difficult to imagine anyone defending this travesty but we do have...ahem...such a person here at LF.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestWhy didn’t Castile’s entirely reasonable behavior earn him en enough of the benefit of the doubt for Yanez to at least keep his finger on the tr t tr tr trigger instead of pulling it?
#5. To: misterwhite, Tooconservative (#4)
(Edited)
Castile's behavior was not reasonable.
Replies to Comment # 5. Reynolds has consistently said Castile was actually reaching for his wallet to retrieve his driver's license,
#11. To: Deckard (#5)
Philando Castile Video Shows a Cop Who Panicked and Killed an Innocent Man
End Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
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