Castile, a year later: 'Tragic doesn't begin to cover it'

Nearing the first anniversary of the death of Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Tom Weber sat down with three guests to talk about the shooting, the subsequent trial and lessons learned.

St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter and firearms charges in Castile's death.

Joining the conversation were Police Chief Blair Anderson of St. Cloud, Minn.; state Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis, and Judge John Tunheim, Minnesota's chief U.S. district judge. Anderson and Hayden are African-Americans.

Following are adapted highlights of the discussion:

Chief Blair Anderson: I'm representing all parties involved here, as a man of color and a career law enforcement officer. I know all too well about our history with respect to people of color and our criminal justice system. But I'm also a patriot, and I'm also a veteran. And I also have strong beliefs in the equity of that system. Though we don't always get it right, I still think it's the best system out there and it's the only one we have. And as a peace officer ... none of us saw what Officer Yanez saw inside that vehicle, or thought that he saw.

Sen. Jeff Hayden: I'm in mourning. A lot of my colleagues are. Certainly the communities that I represent are. People are grieving. People felt like, because there was a trial, maybe we'll finally find justice.

This country has a long history of these kinds of things happening. ... that's the problem. African-American men in our culture don't get the benefit of the doubt that other people in our society do when they do get into an interaction with the police.

Judge John Tunheim: We're all very torn. I don't think anyone could watch that video without feeling anger, feeling questions — wondering what was really going on there. And we really don't know, other than what we have from the officer's testimony at the trial.

The prosecution was a positive thing for the community. ... Hopefully this will lead to better understanding, a stronger light on this entire situation, and perhaps better training and focus on how police can do their jobs better in a way that would not result in deaths of people like Philando Castile.

Anderson: Any of us [police] can be in that situation in a split second. We're asked to make very quick decisions that others have the luxury of scrutinizing for months and sometimes years ... The vast majority of police officers do their job the right way, for the right reasons. No police officer wants to be in that situation, and of course the aftereffects trickle down to all of us.

My hope is that anybody who watches that [dashcam] video, and any decent human being who saw that, is going to be more than jarred by that. "Tragic" doesn't begin to cover how people were feeling.

Hayden: This should not be a partisan, polarizing issue. ... It's been very hard for us to find bipartisan support on some of the changes we need. ... If you look at most of the bills that were offered around changing police culture, they tend to be Democratic bills, and they tend to be from urban people. So how do we make this happen in a way that's good for Minnesota as a whole — take the partisanship out of it? Because if not, we've got a problem.

Anderson: We have to take a comprehensive look at this entire issue. Police departments, police officers, they are microcosms of society at large. And some of the things I've been hearing I don't know are necessarily going to work. The hue and cry has become, "We need to overhaul all of law enforcement." To the point where people have suggested that perhaps police officers in America shouldn't be armed, or that police officers should be made to carry their own personal liability insurance. To me, those things are absurd. I'm for realistic and comprehensive change that we can implement.

Hayden: This is a slow, slogging, incremental approach that needs to change quickly. This isn't anything new. There's always been this underlying issue. In 1989, I worked at the Hennepin County detox office, where Minneapolis officers were throwing inebriated Native Americans in the trunk and driving them to detox. Anecdotally we can come up with this stuff, but that's a collective body of work that's happened over my lifetime. So this kind of slow, incremental approach where law enforcement and other academics get together to kind of edge around the issue — that's exactly what people don't want. And if we don't want this kind of far-reaching radical change that I don't necessarily think would be good for us, then we do have to make significant change. Otherwise, you are going to get people who are finally going to be fed up enough to ... make change that may not be good for society. With all due respect, Chief, if you and the others who do this work don't come with changes that we can feel, then you put it in the hands of people who may not be the best at it.

Anderson: The elephant in the room here that no one wants to talk about are all the social pathologies that lead people to cross our paths.

Hayden: But the social pathology of Philando is my point. I just want to lift that up. I'm not saying he was a perfect individual. But this guy worked every single day. He was beloved by his coworkers. He was a great union member. All those things he did, but he still was killed. The real issue with this guy seems to be that he was an African-American man. And that's what we keep seeing across this country. People are being killed by police officers for the simple fact of being black. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but that's what people feel. And that's what we need to work together to deal with. Black people aren't giving police the benefit of the doubt because they don't feel police are giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Anderson: You and I agree more than we don't. ... I'm just inviting people to not do what we have historically done in this country, and that is paint with a broad brush based on the actions of a few. Not to excuse any aberrant behavior by a cop. Nobody hates a bad cop more than a good one. But we have to stop polarizing ourselves.

Tunheim: I don't know that much can change in the standards that are applied. ... The question in a trial is whether a reasonable cop would have done the same thing under those circumstances with the perspective of the officer at the time. A jury is instructed that they can't look at this with 20-20 hindsight. They have to put themselves in the place of the officer at the time and determine whether the officer's decision...was reasonable or not. And that is a very tough standard to meet.

Anderson: As a man of color, I'm well aware of the way we've been profiled, not just by law enforcement but by society at large. My wish is that we stop admiring the problem. We know what the problem is. If you have some solutions, I'm willing to listen. But a complete overhaul of policing in America is not what's needed, in my professional opinion.

Tunheim: I think this prosecution was positive. I think it has shed light on a very difficult issue. I know it was heartbreaking for a lot of people to hear the verdict. I know there's a lot of anger out there. But it was good that there was a prosecution in this case. This was a good decision by the county attorney, to prosecute. And we got the result that a jury felt was the appropriate result. Now it's up to everyone to talk about this to see how we can do this better as we go forward.

To hear the full segment use the audio player above.

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