I first saw this story at about 2:00 in the morning just hours after the shooting took place. I thought about posting on it immediately but chose not to do that. I wanted to wait until I had more facts. I first saw it on a conservative news site and one comment said that it looked like a simple case of not complying with an officer and making an aggressive action so he was justified. What might surprise some is he was in the minority. Most of the commenters thought that the officer was not in the right and that the death was unjustified some going as far as to call it murder. Although it was extremely disturbing to me I wanted to hold off on this matter until I knew more.
So now that sometime has passed I wanted to saw a few things. The whole thing started when Philando's girlfriend posted a live video on Facebook about the incident. The problem is she was narrating the video and at first we had little to go but what she had said. So here is what the Narrative looked like at that point. Philando was driving in the car with his girlfriend. He is pulled over by a police officer for a broken tail light. He tells the officer he is a concealed and carry permit holder and has a gun on him. The officer asks him for his licenses and when Philando try's to comply he is shot. If that is truly what happened than it is an open and shut case and the officer should go away for a very long time but the video starts after the shooting so we don't know exactly what happened.
There is some new information that seems to get in the way of this narrative though. First the sheriff in the county in which he lived said that Philando never applied for a concealed and carry permit. He still could have been issued one from another county but there is no proof that he had a conceal and carry permit. Also it appears that the police were stopping him because he matched the description of a robbery suspect. Although it could be that the officer used a broken taillight as an excuse and never told the occupants of the car the true reason he was pulling them over.
The officers side of the story seems to be very different. He hasn't made any public statements but we know some of it from a lawyer. It seems to go something like this. He saw a guy that fit the description of a suspect in an armed robbery. He pulled them over and saw that the man had a gun in his lap. The officer told him not to move and the man made a move for the gun and the officer shot him. That is a very different story and in this version the shooting is justified. But this story was obviously made up by the officer after the fact to get out of what he had done, right? Well since the video was made after the shooting we have no evidence to disprove this account of events so we need to go where ever the facts take us.
One of the most disturbing developments was what the girlfriend said on a recent interview with Good Morning America. She said, "The gun never came out, it could never be a threat. He didn't ask about it, he didn't know it was on his person." The problem is that seems to directly contradict what she said on her live face book stream. Where she said "He let the officer know that he had a fire arm and he was reaching for his wallet." Now I know that in high stress situations that it is easy for eye witnesses to have contradicting statements even when they are telling the truth but this is pretty extreme. This is about two completely different narrative. No she is claiming that before the officer even knew he was carrying a weapon Philando was trying to comply with the officer by getting his licenses and was shot. This new narrative provides some new challenges though. If Philando had a concealed and carry and did not tell the officer he violated the law. Also if he did not tell the officer he had a weapon and the officer saw a bit of the weapon, that would give him further cause to use force.
I find it disturbing that so few people in the media have pointed out this contradiction. I have not heard anyone else bring it up. I had to look up the quotes myself to make sure I was right. I am leaving links so you can look it up for yourselves.
The truth is we still do not have all of the facts. We need to reserve judgement until we know more. It is possible that the man was shot in cold blood and it was also possible that the actions by the police were totally justified. Let us all pray for peace and try to act with love.
Here are some of the sources that I used in creating this post.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/philando-castile-showed-gun-traffic-stop-girlfriend-article-1.2706987
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/07/06/police-officer-involved-shooting-in-falcon-heights/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/07/09/lawyer-minnesota-cop-reacted-gun-not-race/86894752/