In the wake of the officer's acquittal and release of dashcam footage - What's your opinion on the shooting of Philando Castile?
All across social media, it seems the majority finds it wholly unjustified. Albeit, many of these individuals are (most likely) ignorant of proper behavior when carrying concealed and the necessity for additional caution, respect and slow movement when dealing with law enforcement in such a situation that the presence of a firearm may be revealed.
Castile revealed that he had a firearm as he allegedly reached for his wallet while the officer instructed him not to. As a CCW-holder, this is a big no-no to me. Though I live in a state that doesn't require me to reveal to law enforcement that I am carrying a concealed firearm, if faced with a similar situation I plan to err on the side of caution and inform the officer if my ID/registration is anywhere near the location of my weapon.
Thoughts?
I hate to speculate on these things, because we just don't know what the officer was seeing at the time of the shooting. The officer obviously felt that Mr. Castile was reaching for a gun, and Mr. Castile isn't here to tell us otherwise. The officer started calm, and then grew increasingly alarmed as Mr. Castile apparently did something that caused him to be alarmed. His first reaction to the statement about the gun wasn't one of panic, but it quickly became one of panic. That alone makes me wonder if Mr. Castile was reaching for a gun. This case has gone through the criminal justice system, and a jury composed of everyday citizens decided that the officer wasn't guilty of a crime. Beyond that, much of what follows in my response here is speculation:
I've been in law enforcement for many years now, and I always carry on/off duty. When I'm stopped on a traffic stop I tell the officer I'm armed, I keep my hands on the steering wheel, and I ask the officer how he/she would like me to proceed. If I'm in an "armed encounter" (i.e. we both have guns on us) with someone I don't know, who may see me as a potential threat to his/her life, I do everything feasible to keep the stress level low in the situation... that means not digging around for things in the car without first checking with the officer, and that means stopping what I'm doing if the officer asks me to stop what I'm doing. These are things that Mr. Castile apparently didn't do.
With all of that said, and the obvious caveat that I wasn't there and we don't have angles to show us every corner of this encounter, I'll say that the officer seemed a little too high-strung, and a bit too "condition black" for my tastes. Maybe this was caused by Mr. Castile forcing his hand in a shooting, or maybe it was caused by the officer's own nervous personality. I don't know the guy, and I wasn't there, but it sure seemed to be a lot higher panic level than I usually see at incidents of this type. Sure, he was in a critical incident, and we all know that. But, he was so locked on target after the shooting that the covering officers practically had to drag him away from the car door, even something like 8-10 minutes after the fact. He wasn't cool, calm, and collected, and I don't know if that issue played into other parts of this shooting. I'd also be curious to hear the testimony from his cover officer... the guy who stood there with his hands in his vest during the entire contact, and then slinked off that way when shots started being fired. It was strange, on so many levels.
Anyway, when we look at an officer's mindset we have to remember to look at the totality of the event. In this case the officer indicated to another officer that he was stopping this vehicle because the suspect matched the description of a robbery suspect. Some have called that a racist motivation, but the officer described specific physical attributes of this individual that led him to believe that this was the same guy (I think he referenced a wide-set nose, and something else). So, the officer may have believed he was encountering an armed robber, and when this person (who admitted to being armed) started reaching for a gun (or something else) the officer may have legitimately believed he was about to be shot.