Minnesota Governor Blames Philando Castile Police Killing On Racial Bias

Mark Dayton says lev­el of force was ‘way in excess’ of what was nec­es­sary and demands jus­tice depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion as Obama calls shoot­ings ‘a seri­ous problem’

The fatal shoot­ing of a black man by police in Minnesota was attrib­uted to racism by the state’s gov­er­nor on Thursday, as Barack Obama urged Americans to admit that the coun­try faced a “seri­ous prob­lem” of prej­u­dice in law enforcement.

Dispensing with the cau­tion typ­i­cal­ly shown by elect­ed lead­ers fol­low­ing shoot­ings by police, Governor Mark Dayton blamed the death of Philando Castile on racial bias and said the offi­cer involved used a lev­el of force “way in excess” of what was nec­es­sary. “Would this have hap­pened if the dri­ver and pas­sen­ger were white?” Dayton asked at a press con­fer­ence. “I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to con­front, and I think all of Minnesota is forced to con­front, that this kind of racism exists.”

The killing of Castile, 32, is the lat­est to roil the US in the near­ly two years since the fatal shoot­ing by police of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, led to waves of unrest around the coun­try. Castile’s death was broad­cast live on Facebook by his girl­friend after he was shot by an offi­cer through the win­dow of their car dur­ing a traf­fic stop near St Paul on Wednesday evening. Castile had been reach­ing for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion after warn­ing the offi­cer that he was legal­ly car­ry­ing a hand­gun, accord­ing to his girl­friend. It was the sec­ond time this week that the killing by police of an African American was cap­tured on wide­ly shared cell­phone video. On Tuesday, 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot dead dur­ing a strug­gle with two offi­cers in Baton Rouge,Louisiana. Sterling, who was sell­ing CDs out­side a shop, appeared to have a pis­tol in his pock­et. Obama said Americans “should be deeply trou­bled” by the two shoot­ings, as he sug­gest­ed it was nec­es­sary to “admit we’ve got a seri­ous prob­lem” with racial bias or its appear­ance among some police offi­cers. “We’ve seen such tragedies far too many times,” Obama said of the Sterling and Castile killings, in a Facebook post.

The two men were the 135^th and 136^th African Americans to be killed by police across the US in 2016, accord­ing to anongo­ing Guardian project to doc­u­ment every death caused by law enforce­ment offi­cers. In total, 561 peo­ple have been killed so far this year. Castile’s moth­er, Valerie, said she was out­raged by the death of the 32-year-old school cafe­te­ria work­er. “Every day you hear of anoth­er black per­son being shot down – gunned down – by the peo­ple who are sup­posed to pro­tect us,” she told CNN. Some of the country’s most promi­nent black cul­tur­al fig­ures also expressed anger over the shoot­ings. “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our com­mu­ni­ties,” the singer Beyoncé said in a state­ment on her web­site. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us’.” An exten­sive list of names of peo­ple killed by US police was pro­ject­ed as a back­drop to Beyoncé’s con­cert in Glasgow, Scotland, on Thursday evening.

Dayton, a Democrat, asked the US Department of Justice to inves­ti­gate Castile’s shoot­ing after pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side his man­sion overnight and wrapped his gates in crime-scene tape. The depart­ment is already review­ing the death of Sterling in Baton Rouge.

“I will do every­thing in my pow­er to help pro­tect the integri­ty of that inves­ti­ga­tion, to ensure a prop­er and just out­come for all involved,” Dayton said in a statement.

A Department of Justice spokesman said in an email that the depart­ment “stands ready to pro­vide assis­tance” to Minnesota author­i­ties in inves­ti­gat­ing the shoot­ing if required “and will inde­pen­dent­ly assess what fur­ther action may be war­rant­ed”. Officials said on Wednesday that they would open a fed­er­al civ­il rights inves­ti­ga­tion into Sterling’s death in Louisiana. That the shoot­ings were a cause for con­cern. Asked in a con­gres­sion­al hear­ing whether killings such as those of Castile and Sterling were “hap­pen­ing at an alarm­ing rate”, Comey replied: “‘Yes’ is the emphat­ic answer.” Comey had pre­vi­ous­ly stood out with­in theObama admin­is­tra­tion by focus­ing on con­cerns that protests against police shoot­ings may be caus­ing a rise in crime by prompt­ing offi­cers to hold back from con­fronta­tions. Castile and his girl­friend, Diamond Reynolds, were pulled over at about 9pm on Wednesday because their car had a bro­ken tail light, accord­ing to Reynolds. Quickly start­ing to film and broad­cast to Facebook’s live video fea­ture, Reynolds said to the cam­era that the offi­cer had just opened fire as Castile reached into his pocket.

“He was try­ing to get out his ID and his wal­let out his pock­et and he let the offi­cer know that he was that he had a firearm,” she says in the video. “He was reach­ing for his wal­let and the offi­cer just shot him in his arm.” Reynolds esti­mat­ed that the offi­cer fired between three and five times. Castile is seen slumped across a front seat cov­ered in blood. He squirms with his eyes half-open. Reynolds says to cam­era: “Please don’t tell me that he’s gone. Please offi­cer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him.” As oth­er offi­cers arrive, Reynolds is instruct­ed to leave the vehi­cle. The phone con­tin­ues to film as it is laid on the ground. One dis­traught-sound­ing offi­cer, who has not been iden­ti­fied, can be heard shout­ing “Fuck” repeat­ed­ly. After Reynolds is detained, her four-year-old daugh­ter can be heard com­fort­ing her. “It’s OK mom­my,” she says The deaths of Sterling and Castile have revived protests about the treat­ment by offi­cers of black peo­ple who appear to be car­ry­ing firearms legal­ly or non-threat­en­ing­ly, as mil­lions of Americans do every day with­out incident.

Castile’s moth­er said her son was “try­ing to do the right things, and live accord­ing­ly by the law”. Minnesotans are enti­tled to car­ry a hand­gun if they obtain a per­mit from their local sher­iff after earn­ing a train­ing cer­tifi­cate. Reynolds said Castile was licensed to car­ry his gun. The offi­cer who shot Castile works for the small St Anthony police depart­ment, whose chief John Ohl said in his 2015 annu­al report that out­siders “can eas­i­ly over­look just how dif­fi­cult it can be to deal humane­ly, as cops must, even with the dregs of our soci­ety”. The report sug­gest­ed St Anthony’s 23 offi­cers each received an aver­age of 67 hours of train­ing last year, includ­ing on de-esca­la­tion, the use of force and firearms. In the Baton Rouge case, police con­front­ed Sterling because he matched the descrip­tion of a man report­ed to have threat­ened some­one with a gun. Two video clips of his strug­gle with police indi­cate, how­ev­er, that his pis­tol remained in his pock­et and was removed by offi­cers after he was shot. It was unclear from the footage whether Sterling tried to reach for the weapon.

On Thursday, it was announced that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly of Walter Scott, the 50-year-old African American killed by police in South Carolina in 2015, would now rep­re­sent mem­bers of Sterling’s fam­i­ly as well. “We will demand trans­paren­cy from the Baton Rouge police depart­ment and all oth­er agen­cies involved in this inves­ti­ga­tion. We will not stop until every ques­tion has been answered,” said attor­neys L. Chris Stewart and Justin Bamberg in a state­ment. Scott’s death, which was also cap­tured on video by a wit­ness, result­ed in a $6.5m set­tle­ment, and mur­der charges for the white offi­cer who opened fire. The cas­es joined a series of flash­points in recent years includ­ing those of Tamir Rice and John Crawford, two young African Americans who were sep­a­rate­ly shot dead by police in Ohio in 2014 while han­dling pel­let guns in a park and a Walmart store respec­tive­ly. In both cas­es, offi­cers fired with­in sec­onds of see­ing them. Campaigners said African Americans were treat­ed unfair­ly to dead­ly effect. “No mat­ter how well you fol­low the rules, you can still be dead because you’re black,” said Brittany Packnett, an activist and for­mer mem­ber of Obama’s White House polic­ing task­force. “Compliance has nev­er guar­an­teed our safe­ty.” Gun rights advo­cates who are typ­i­cal­ly forth­right in defend­ing firearms own­ers have been crit­i­cised for fail­ing to speak out in sup­port of black peo­ple tar­get­ed while armed. Asked about the Castile shoot­ing, Jennifer Baker, the National Rifle Association’s direc­tor of pub­lic affairs, said only on Thursday: “We have not issued a state­ment.” Larry Pratt, the exec­u­tive direc­tor emer­i­tus of Gun Owners of America, bris­tled at the sug­ges­tion that race made a dif­fer­ence. “We don’t speak out for black American nor white America or any oth­er kinds of racial posi­tion. That is an obnox­ious ques­tion. Keep ask­ing ques­tions like that and you’re going to get hung up on, like right now,” he said, then dis­con­nect­ed the line. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​/​j​u​l​/​0​7​/​p​h​i​l​a​n​d​o​-​c​a​s​t​i​l​e​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​-​c​a​l​l​s​-​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​d​e​p​a​r​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​q​u​i​r​y​-​f​b​i​-​m​i​n​n​e​s​o​t​a​-​o​f​f​i​c​ers