{"id":796,"date":"2019-07-04T03:31:06","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T03:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=796"},"modified":"2019-07-04T03:31:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T03:31:06","slug":"a-tale-of-two-cities-two-cops-two-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"A TALE OF TWO CITIES \u2026 TWO COPS \u2026 TWO SHOOTINGS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Memorial Display at Site of Philando Castile’s Death<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been a few weeks since the sentencing after the verdict in the trial of Mohammed Noor in Minneapolis<\/a> \u2026 for shooting an unarmed citizen while on duty as a Minneapolis police officer.\u00a0 That shooting happened in July 2017, not long after a jury in Ramsey County found former Saint Anthony Park police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty of manslaughter<\/a> in the shooting of an unarmed man named Philando Castile in \u2026 almost three years ago now.\u00a0 Writing on these two shootings might have been a little behind the times, but in the past few weeks, police in Arizona held a black family at gunpoint<\/a> because their 4-year old child was suspected of shoplifting \u2026 and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg had to leave the campaign trail<\/a> shortly before the debates in order to return to South Bend, Indiana (where he is mayor) to deal with the fallout after another incident in which a white police officer shot a black man.\u00a0 These kinds of \u00a0stories keep repeating and the clear similarities \u2013 and differences \u2013 between the two local cases here, the shooting of Philando Castile in the greater Saint Paul area and the shooting of Justine Ruszcyk\/Damond in Minneapolis, provide a lot of insight in to just what is going on here<\/a> \u2026 there\u2026 and pretty much everywhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the earlier case: the shooting of Philando Castile by Saint Anthony Park Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

On July 6, 2016<\/a>, Officer Yanez pulled over a driver named Philando Castile in Falcon Heights (a small suburb north of Saint Paul and east of Minneapolis).\u00a0 The given reason for the traffic stop was a broken taillight on Castile\u2019s car.\u00a0 However, Yanez suspected Castile had been involved in recent robbery of a convenience store along that stretch of road and wanted a closer look.\u00a0 The stop was proceeding normally.\u00a0 Castile was in the process of reaching for his wallet to produce the identification Yanez requested when he mentioned to the officer that he did have a gun on him and that he had a permit to carry it.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Seconds later, Yanez fired nine shots into the car, fatally wounding Castile.\u00a0 His girlfriend, seated in the passenger seat next to him, live-streamed the aftermath on Facebook as Castile bled out.\u00a0 Her four-year old daughter was in the backseat as these events unfolded.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ramsey County District Attorney John Choi made the decision about bringing charges himself rather than working with a grand jury.\u00a0 In November, he announced charges of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Castile and two counts of reckless discharge of a firearm, due to the presence of the girlfriend and her daughter in the car. In making the announcement, he stated no reasonable officer would have responded to the situation as Yanez did and set forth the forensic evidence that proved it was impossible for Yanez to have seen Castile\u2019s gun until his body had been removed from the car.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>At his trial, Yanez was represented by one of the most prominent law firms in the area.\u00a0 His ace attorneys requested a change of judge, as permitted under state law \u2013 and for which no reason or justification is required.\u00a0 But it did cause the case to be reassigned from a judge who happened to be black to one who happened to be white.\u00a0 And although the defense could not strike every person of color from the jury, only two people of color were impaneled for the trial that began on May 30, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Choi first announced the charges, he made it clear that the physical evidence at the scene proved Yanez could not have seen Castile\u2019s gun as the officer had claimed.\u00a0 One of the places where Castile was struck by a bullet was his right hand.\u00a0 The gun was in the right pocket of the shorts he was wearing.\u00a0 He could not have removed the gun without unbuckling his seat belt \u2013 which he was in the process of doing when Yanez started shooting.\u00a0 If Castile had been pulling out his gun, as Yanez claimed, then the bullet would have torn through the shorts in order to hit his hand.\u00a0 But there was no hole in the shorts.\u00a0 That must have been made as clear at trial, because, in the deliberations, the jury did ask to see Castile\u2019s shorts again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The defense insisted that the amount of THC detected in Castile\u2019s blood at the time of death be presented \u2013 even though the lab scientist who presented it argued that, because THC is fat soluble and the breakdown of cells at death results in the release of all stored accumulations, such test results are meaningless.\u00a0 However, the judge allowed it. The defense insisted because it was important to their case that Castile be considered a drug user rather than the dedicated school cafeteria worker, beloved by the students where he\u2019d worked.\u00a0 Part of the defense strategy was to argue that Castile was sluggish in responding to Yanez\u2019s commands because he was high.\u00a0 However, at the same time the defense attorneys wanted him portrayed as sluggish from marijuana use, they also wanted him to still be capable of drawing \u2013 and potentially firing \u2013 his gun lightning fast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the biggest key to the defense was Yanez\u2019s emotional description of how much he feared for his life.\u00a0 Police officers are allowed to use deadly force if they believe their lives are in danger.\u00a0 Like any belief, it does not have to be rooted in demonstrable reality; the belief only needs to be sincere.\u00a0 And Yanez testified that he truly believed he was about to be killed in that moment.\u00a0 On the witness stand, he talked of thinking only of his own little girl and his wife at home as he emptied his clip into the man in the car, oblivious of the child in the backseat car and the other man\u2019s girlfriend in the car, right beside him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>By now, anyone who cares to has seen the dashcam video of Yanez\u2019s stop<\/a>.\u00a0 Most of us who have watched it wonder how the jury could have found Yanez not guilty.\u00a0 We see an officer losing control, yelling vague commands repeatedly without allowing time for any response from person he\u2019s yelling at \u2013 and then he starts shooting and keeps shooting until his clip is empty.\u00a0 The jurors who have spoken about the decision say they wished the camera would have shown them what was happening in the car.\u00a0 They are sure Yanez had to be reacting to something specific that Castile was doing.\u00a0 That Yanez was most likely reacting to something that was only in his imagination does not seem to be an angle the jurors ever considered. He convinced them he truly feared for his own life, that if he had not shot immediately, he would have been killed by the driver he had pulled over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Yanez noticed, or recalled noticing, before, during, and after the stop is telling for what he claimed to have seen and what he clearly did not.\u00a0 He thought Castile had been involved in the robbery \u201cbecause of his wide-set nose.\u201d\u00a0 He mentioned making eye contact with Castile as he drove by and saw \u201ca deer in the headlights look.\u201d To have seen all this so clearly in a car just passing by (at about 40mph) suggests remarkable powers of sight and observation, perhaps even approaching superpowers.\u00a0 Yanez saw a black man and decided he was a suspect in a recent crime. Then, when he realized the black man had a gun, he saw a dangerous criminal who wanted to kill him.\u00a0 That\u2019s what he responded to. \u00a0The observation of \u201cdeer in the headlights\u201d seems more a projection of Yanez\u2019s own fears than a clearly guilty look on Castile\u2019s face \u2013 since Castile had no reason to think he was a suspect in anything.\u00a0 In response to questions from reporters when Yanez was charged, District Attorney Choi stated specifically: Philando Castile was not \u2013 and never had been \u2013 a suspect in the convenience store robbery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet for all the keen observations Yanez reported, he did not see the little girl in the backseat.\u00a0 When the little girl undid her car seat restraint and climbed out of the car, Yanez can be heard on the dashcam video yelling at the child to freeze, to not move.\u00a0 (I do wonder if he would have fired at her as well if he\u2019d still had bullets in his clip.)\u00a0 But instead, Yanez\u2019s partner recovered his senses and is seen in the video picking up the little girl and carrying her to safety away from the street \u2026 away from the car where a man who was like a father to her is dying \u2026 from her mother who is being treated like a criminal suspect, not allowed to move in any way \u2013 not to assist her dying beloved nor even her own child.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite his later claim to have seen Castile drawing his gun, Yanez is heard in the recording saying he didn\u2019t know where the gun was.\u00a0 He never saw it.\u00a0 He could not have seen it.\u00a0 The physical evidence proved that was impossible.\u00a0 But the only way Yanez could avoid the guilty verdict was to convince others that he feared for his life; the only thing that would justify his actions would be a real danger of being killed.\u00a0 So, he convinced himself he saw the gun \u2026 and prepared to convince others as well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He convinced most of the jurors, and so, he was found not guilty<\/a>.\u00a0 It took them more than five days and over 25 hours.\u00a0 There was a hold out, but the judge would not permit the jury to fail to reach the verdict.\u00a0 The one man who remained unconvinced that Yanez was not guilty had his reasons \u2013 which he never disclosed to other jurors or to anyone outside of the jury.\u00a0 Apparently, he didn\u2019t think there was any chance of moving the others to his side, so he gave up and gave in to finally be done.\u00a0 The jurors had their reasons for their decision, and those reasons may well have been good and right and appropriate. However, in the end, they reached the wrong verdict on June 16, 2017.\u00a0 Consider the similar case that followed \u2013 and note the key differences between the two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now we move on to the second case: the shooting of Justine Ruszczyk (Roos-check) Damond.\u00a0 She used both last names interchangeably but had not yet married her fianc\u00e9, Don Damond<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One month after the verdict in the Yanez trial, on July 15th<\/sup>, Minneapolis resident and Australia native Justine Ruszczyk called 911 to report suspicious activity in the alley behind her house.\u00a0 Two officers were dispatched to the scene.\u00a0 A few moments after they arrived, one of them, Mohamed Noor, fatally shot Ruszczyk through the open window<\/a> on his partner\u2019s side of the car.\u00a0 Apparently Ruszczyk had come to the alley to meet the officers \u2026 perhaps to guide them further \u2026 perhaps to provide more information \u2026 we will never know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The incident was investigated, and the results were turned over to Hennepin County Mike Freeman on September 12th<\/sup> for determination regarding any possible charges.\u00a0 Previously, Freeman had stated he would make charging decisions in cases such as this himself, rather than rely on a grand jury. However, Freeman found his investigation was hampered by lack of cooperation from the officers involved and ultimately resorted to a grand jury in February.\u00a0\u00a0 Then on March 20, 2018, Freeman announced charges<\/a> of second-degree manslaughter (the same as for Yanez over a year before) and third-degree murder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the Yanez case, District Attorney Choi stated that the county could not bring murder charges because the prosecution would have to prove that Yanez intended to kill someone when he stopped Castile in his car.\u00a0 When District Attorney Freeman added murder charges against Noor, many voices criticized it as prosecutorial overreach and suggested it might be something intended for plea bargaining.\u00a0 Ultimately, Noor stood trial for both charges.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the waiting for charges (which was about twice as long as in the Ramsey County case), and especially early during the investigation, many voices weighed in on what had happened.\u00a0 As is the case after any event like this, there were plenty of public tributes and statements declaring how wonderful the deceased was \u2026 what the officers might have or should have or could have done differently \u2026 and so on.\u00a0 However, there was one notable distinction.\u00a0 Any discussion of possible culpability of the victim in her death was quickly silenced.\u00a0 A few attempted to question why Ruszczyk went to the alley instead of staying in her home.\u00a0 But those questions were silenced with accusations that those asking were blaming the victim.\u00a0 Ruszczyk was never allowed to be presented or regarded as anything more than wonderful, beautiful, innocent, and fully deserving to continue living.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was not the case with Castile.\u00a0 Descriptions of Castile as \u201cMr. Rogers with dreadlocks\u201d were challenged: what about gang affiliations? \u2026 what about the marijuana use? \u2026 he couldn\u2019t really be a good person if any of that were true.\u00a0 Even in the trial process, the base presumption of most jurors was that Castile must have done something to cause Yanez\u2019s fear that necessitated the use of deadly force to preserve the officer from an apparent danger.\u00a0 Unlike Philando Castile (and other black men), the white woman\u2019s reputation remains unsullied \u2013 even after the recent trial.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The trial was convened a year and a few weeks after charges were filed.\u00a0 Noor was represented by the same legal team that had successfully defended Yanez against similar charges in his 2017 trial.\u00a0 The trial started on April 8th<\/sup> and, finally, on April 25th<\/sup>, Mohammed Noor made his first statements<\/a> about what had happened on that July night almost two years before.\u00a0 As Yanez had argued, Noor stated he feared for his life \u2013 and for his partner\u2019s life.\u00a0 That he and his partner had responded to the 911 call, driven through the alley in question with lights off and windows down to see if they could find any indications of suspicious activity was a matter of police call logs.\u00a0 They had just called in to report the completion of their assignment and switched off their body cameras.\u00a0 Just when they thought they were done, there was some sort of noise or glimpse of movement outside the squad car.\u00a0 Noor described how his partner\u2019s attempt to draw his gun alerted him to a threat outside the car.\u00a0 For some reason, Noor\u2019s partner did not completely draw his weapon, but Noor drew his \u2026 put an arm across his partner\u2019s body to keep him out of the line of fire \u2026 and fired one shot through the open window, fatally striking Ruszczyk.\u00a0 Noor stated he fired to protect his partner and himself from the apparent threat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The jury was not convinced by Noor\u2019s explanation.\u00a0 Within six hours of deliberation, the jurors found Noor guilty on both counts<\/a>.\u00a0 Last month, he was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The cases are similar: non-threatening civilian shot dead without warning by a police officer.\u00a0 In both cases the officers began shooting before verifying whether a real threat to their lives (or even safety) were actually present.\u00a0 Both officers involved are persons of color.\u00a0 Yanez is Latino; Noor is an immigrant from Somalia.\u00a0 There were questions about the backgrounds and training of both officers.\u00a0 Noor had been subject to a couple of disciplinary situations and there were questions if he had been rushed onto the force without being fully assessed.\u00a0 Yanez had taken a controversial \u201cBullet Proof Warrior\u201d training program that encourages officers to be alert for potential threats at all times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In some ways, it could be argued that Noor and his partner had even more reason to be suspicious and afraid than Yanez.\u00a0 They had been called to a potential crime scene and had found nothing \u2013 did that mean nothing had happened, the caller had been mistaken?… or was there someone up to no good who was still roaming the area?\u00a0 They were inside their car, easy targets, unlike Yanez, who was outside of a vehicle with far more freedom of movement to retreat or move out of the line of potential fire.\u00a0 Unlike Noor and his partner, Yanez knew what he was responding to and what he was doing there: using a seemingly routine traffic stop to check a possible suspect in a recent crime.\u00a0 Perhaps it was Yanez\u2019s own deception in the traffic stop that had him most on edge in that situation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the sticking point: If you think the jury got it right in the Noor case (and I think the jury did for the most part \u2013 although I do think the murder charge was excessive), then the jury got it wrong the Yanez trial.\u00a0 The jury in the Noor trial could not look past the reality that a black immigrant killed a white woman.\u00a0 If Noor had been white, would there have been that murder charge? \u00a0The jury in the Yanez trial was okay with a Latino man killing a black man.\u00a0 True, in the Yanez case, both victim and killer were men of color (just as in the Noor case, both killer and victim were immigrants); however, when it comes to race, Latinos sometimes get a pass because \u201cat least he\u2019s not black.\u201d\u00a0 A black man never gets the benefit of doubt.\u00a0 One wonders if charges would have been brought at all if Yanez had been white \u2026 or if he would have been found not guilty if the person he killed had been white.\u00a0 If Yanez had shot a white man under the same circumstances, he\u2019d likely be about three years into a sentence like Noor\u2019s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Race matters in these things \u2013 it matters even more than what actually happened.\u00a0 Would it really be possible to find 12 people who could imagine that a police officer was so afraid for his life because a driver he stopped told the office \u201cI have a concealed weapon that I am permitted to carry\u201d that he fired nine shots into the driver less than a minute and a half into a traffic stop if the driver were white?\u00a0 Can we imagine a white officer being charged with murder for shooting a person of color who spooked him in his squad car?\u00a0 How often do stories like these happen \u2013 where a white person is shot by a police office under questionable circumstances?\u00a0 Not very often \u2026 which is why there was a conviction in Noor\u2019s case but not in cases like the Yanez trial.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like Philando Castile\u2019s mother said after the trial, when reforms to police procedures were being discussed, we want the police officer to go home safely to his family at the end of his shift \u2013 and we want the civilian to go home safely to his after being stopped<\/a>.\u00a0 Rather than searching for excuses, justifying the use of deadly force against subjects who happen to be people of color, these events need to be treated like \u201cnever events\u201d in hospitals: What happened should not have happen and it must never happen again.\u00a0 When these \u201cnever events\u201d happen in the hospitals, the investigative team goes over everything \u2026 sorting through what happened \u2026 what went wrong \u2026 what could have (should have?) been done differently \u2026 what will be done going forward to prevent this from happening again?\u00a0 Criminal charges and convictions are not necessarily the answer in police cases.\u00a0 However, in order to learn from mistakes, it is necessary to first admit the mistake was made.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And racism is the first mistake \u2026 unacknowledged, unquestioned bias that sees a person of color and sees that person as bad, less than, no good.\u00a0 It was easy for the jury to convict Officer Mohammed Noor in the death of a white woman.\u00a0 It was apparently impossible for a jury to convict Officer Yanez in the death of a black man \u2013 and even more impossible to imagine any officer shooting a white driver in a similar situation.\u00a0 Can you imagine police officers drawing guns to confront a white family whose four-year old picked up something she shouldn\u2019t have in a store?\u00a0 Of course not \u2013 that would be excessive, over-the-top, inexcusable.\u00a0 But we excuse it when a black child is involved.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 That answer is the problem.\u00a0 It\u2019s not on black people to fix it.\u00a0 It\u2019s on white people.\u00a0 We have the problem; we have to fix it because we\u2019re the only ones who can.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Something to think about<\/a> the next time \u2013 because, until this changes, there will be a next time \u2026 and another \u2026 and another \u2026 and \u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a few weeks since the sentencing after the verdict in the trial of Mohammed Noor in Minneapolis \u2026 for shooting an unarmed citizen while on duty as a Minneapolis police officer.\u00a0 That shooting happened in July 2017, not long after a jury in Ramsey County found former Saint …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-topics","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maybegoosefeathers.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}