St. Paul, MN – Last week, a Minnesota jury found St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty in the 2016 shooting of Philando Castile. This week, they released the dashcam footage leading one to question just how blinded the jury was in coming to their decision to acquit him.
When watching the very graphic and disheartening dashcam footage below, one is left in utter bewilderment at the jury’s decision. Perhaps it was the judge’s decision to disallow them access to Yanez’s testimony — twice. Or, perhaps, a slick tongue police apologist, trained in the art hypnotizing the jury into thinking that law-abiding licensed conceal carry permit holders are somehow a threat to cops.
Or, perhaps, America has a horrid problem holding police officers accountable for murdering citizens.
“No reasonable officer would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a press conference after watching the dashcam footage last year. “Philando Castile was not a threat.”
And now we know why.
For some reason, during the stop, the cowardly Yanez began to fear for his life because of Castile. However, all Castile was doing was telling the officer that he was legally concealed carrying.
Under Minnesota law, you do not have to disclose that you are carrying a firearm during a traffic stop unless you are asked. However, if asked, carriers must answer truthfully and provide their permit to carry, along with identification. During the stop, Yanez became aware of Castile’s handgun and Castile was then legally required to show him his license.
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While Castile reached for his license, the fearful Yanez opened fire — dumping 7 rounds into the innocent man.
“He emphatically repeated that he was not pulling out the gun, only that he was lawfully carrying,” explained Choi, noting that even after his dead body was examined that the gun was still in the bottom of his pocket — and, his permit for carrying it was in his other pocket.
“His dying words were in protest that he wasn’t reaching for his gun,” noted Choi.
The cowardly Yanez’s murderous actions were so uncalled for that the shots even surprised his partner.
“During this entire incident, officer Cowzer did not touch or remove his gun from its holster,” stated Choi. “By his actions, and his own words, officer Cowzer did not see Castile make any sudden movements and was surprised by the gunshots.”
Now that the video has been released, we can see all of these facts for ourselves.
“There has always been a systemic problem in the state of Minnesota, and me thinking, common sense that we would get justice. But nevertheless, the system continues to fail black people,” Valerie Castile, Philando’s mother said. “My son loved this city, and the city killed my son and the murderer gets away.”
As the Free Thought Project reported last year, Castile was a ticking time bomb because of law enforcement policy in the United States.
Prior to being pulled over and murdered by Yanez, Castile had been stopped a whopping 52 times. All of these ‘offenses’ were non-criminal, had no victim, and were used to extract thousands from this poor man.
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According to the Post, Castile was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.
Castile was not a criminal. Not only was he not a criminal, Castile was an upstanding member of the community who now mourns his loss, yet he was targetted by police dozens of times.
Castile was murdered — over a tail light.
But, as the Free Thought has pointed out, this was a near mathematical certainty because Yanez had undergone special training which taught him that the public is the enemy. In May of 2014, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Yanez underwent a 20-hour seminar on “Street Survival” taught by Illinois-based Calibre Press, which teaches courses on the subject to police officers nationwide.
The company’s “Street Survival Seminar” overview displays a monomaniacal focus on that most important of all policy considerations, “officer safety.” It treats every police encounter as a combat situation in which only one life truly matters – that of the government’s armed emissary, not that of the citizen who is supposedly being protected and served by him.
And now we see the ultimate result of training cops to kill.
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