‘Not Going to Do This Anymore’: Fed-Up Prosecutor Is Done With BS Traffic Stops, John Choi, the Minnesota prosecutor who charged the cop who killed Philando Castile, is already earning enemies for his groundbreaking new policy.
By Andrew Boryga…
John Choi said he will never forget July 6, 2016 — the day 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by a St. Anthony Police Department officer during a simple traffic stop over a broken taillight.
When asked for his license and registration, Castile told officer Jeronimo Yanez he had a licensed gun. Yanez, fearful Castile might reach for it, told him not to. But despite Castile’s insistence that he was not reaching for the gun, Yanez fired seven shots from close range, killing him. Later, Yanez and another officer in the car believed Castile resembled a robbery suspect before they pulled him over.
Choi, the Ramsey County Attorney in Minnesota who charged Yanez for the shooting and later saw Yanez acquitted by a jury, told The Daily Beast he’s never stopped thinking about the way Castile’s interaction with Yanez began — over an innocuous infraction. Choi said it’s the sort of traffic stop that Black people like Castile, who’d been stopped over 40 times before his death, are subject to daily by police officers often fishing for drugs, guns, and an easy arrest.
In honor of Castile, Choi announced Wednesday his office would no longer prosecute felony cases resulting from minor traffic stops for violations like an expired registration, overly tinted windows, or broken lights. The change, Choi said, is a deliberate attempt to cut down on what he said are unnecessary stops by police of people of color that too often spiral into fatal incidents.
“I’m not going to do this anymore,” Choi told The Daily Beast. “I am not going to perpetuate these unjust practices that disproportionately impact my community.”
Valerie Castile, Philando’s mother, praised Choi for the change and said she hopes it inspires other county prosecutors and police departments to do the same. She told The Daily Beast her son’s broken tail light was simply an “excuse” to pull him over, just as he’d been pulled over dozens of times before. “You went from a simple traffic stop to a murder,” she said. “He ended up being murdered because of a broken taillight.”
Despite the praise from some corners, Choi told The Daily Beast he’s been working behind the scenes to get police departments in his county onboard with the change. The hope, he said, is that his new strategy isn’t just a top-down decision. Still, one that would also inspire departments to amend their own internal policies and practices — which experts said often train police to stop drivers of color and those in high crime areas with low-level traffic stops in the hopes of finding drugs or guns.
But Allison Schaber, the president of a union representing Ramsey County Sheriff Office deputies, told The Daily Beast that Choi’s new policy “is another example of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office circumventing the legislative process to satisfy his own political ambitions.” Schaber said Choi furthers the “misnomer” that valid traffic stops for small violations “are anything less than legal stops that target activity already deemed illegal.”
Like others critical of Choi’s change, Schaber said she believes the new policy will only lead to more crime. “County Attorney Choi should focus on reducing the crime wave his constituents are currently experiencing instead of trying to find more ways to justify criminal behavior.”
Brian Peters, the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers union executive director, fired a missive at Choi during the press conference, calling the policy “absurd” and “a slap in the face” to victims of crime. “Ramsey County residents be warned: those that break the law won’t even get a slap on the wrist — they’ll get a high-five from the county attorney and be left to commit more and more serious offenses,” he said in a statement on Facebook.
Choi said Peters’ statement was an “outdated model” of values that led the country to amass incarceration crisis and racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Choi told The Daily Beast that after meeting with police chiefs in his county in June, about half the chiefs seemed willing to make their own changes due to his decision.
On Wednesday, ahead of Choi’s announcement, Chief Todd Axtell of the St. Paul Police Department announced a new set of guidance that aligns with Choi’s decision, according to an email to his staff obtained by The Daily Beast.
Axtell said he would direct patrol officers to prioritize enforcement on reducing crashes, injuries, and death by focusing on violations related to speeding, reckless driving, driving under the influence, and running lights.
He said that minor violations like expired tabs, a single burned-out headlight or taillight, small windshield cracks, lack of license plate lights, and small objects hanging from mirrors are “illegal and important to note.” Still, he said that they have little effect on the safety of citizens.
“I want to be perfectly clear: We should not use these violations as a primary reason for a traffic stop unless there’s an articulable public safety concern,” Axtell wrote.
The Roseville Police Department has also made public their support of Choi’s decision. In a press release on Wednesday, the department acknowledged that focusing on “equipment violations” disproportionately affects communities of color and “undermines law enforcement’s legitimacy.”
The release states that on August 1, the department changed their traffic policy, and “absent other factors,” they will no longer enforce “equipment violations, expired registrations, or other non-moving violations that do not create a public safety concern or a dangerous condition.” (This story originated at the Daily Beast)
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If the American voter were an intelligent electorate, the Republican party would no longer be viable. Alas, it really isn’t, so the people’s enemies continue to create maintain the structures that have made America one of the worst Human Rights offenders in human history.
Yes, I said it; talking about human rights and human rights are two different things. After keeping other people in bonded servitude for hundreds of years, refusing to pay them for their ancestor’s blood and labor, and instituting another form of slavery since the Civil War, America is by far the world’s greatest human rights offender in my book.
The actions America took, immediately after reconstruction to institute the black codes, redlining, jim crow, the prison industrial complex, and other white power laws which are intact today, makes it clear that America has no legal or moral authority to speak to any other nation about human rights abuses when it is itself still one of the greatest offenders.
Only in America can police officials decide what the laws will be. This kind of tail-wagging the dog scenario is only possible because the American police officer, white or black, enforces whiteness.
I speak out against complicit prosecutors and judges daily; I have carried this story with great pride and joy because it does not validate my concerns about prosecutors and judges being complicit with murderous cops. It shows that I have been on to something that runs much deeper.
Thank you, Prosecutor Choi.…..
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.