Shooting of "Mr. Phil" shocks Minnesota school colleagues
Source: Associated Press
Shooting of "Mr. Phil" shocks Minnesota school colleagues
Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
Updated 7:03 pm, Thursday, July 7, 2016
Philando Castile put on a suit and tie to interview for a supervisory position in the school district where he had worked since he was a teenager. He told the interviewer his goal was to one day "sit on the other side of this table." His upbeat disposition won him the job.
"He stood out because he was happy, friendly and related to people well," said Katherine Holmquist-Burks, principal at J.J. Hill Montessori in St. Paul, Minnesota, who hired him to oversee the school cafeteria.
Now, colleagues and family members are trying to understand why a police officer in a St. Paul suburb fatally shot Castile, 32, after stopping his car Wednesday night. The Justice Department announced it would conduct an investigation, which Gov. Mark Dayton said would look at whether Castile's race played a role in the incident. Castile was black.
. . .
Students at the magnet school came to know him as "Mr. Phil," a gregarious man who sneaked students extra Graham crackers and other treats in the lunch line.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Shooting-of-Mr-Phil-shocks-Minnesota-school-8346774.php
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)one of these days I fear that there will be one too many after the many too many.
Then, this country may turn into chaos.
Consider what may happen with Drumpf in the White House and the pitch forks and tar and feathers come out in earnest.
This is a very scary year.
Blandocyte
(1,231 posts)Why didn't he try to give first aid? Hell, why not just move away to the back of the car before drawing his gun? Maybe the police department can be held liable for poor training. Tragic shit. So many lives ruined.
fbc
(1,668 posts)He should be drug tested immediately to see if steroids played a role.
RoccoRyg
(260 posts)You'll hear the cop swearing to himself, panicking and making excuses to the live-streaming audience. You can tell immediately that he knows he screwed up.
Even while he's doing that, he continues to aim his gun at the unarmed woman with her daughter in the back of the car. This goes beyond unprofessional... it's insanity.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)He was afraid for his life the moment Phil said he had a gun. Why? Because black people are scary.
That's it. He was conditioned to think a black man with a gun was going to try to kill him.
Period.
that is racist...but it was probably something the whole police department shared in.
Does that make it right? NO. He's still guilty of manslaughter if nothing else, in my eyes. I'd say murder for racist thoughts.
pnwmom
(108,995 posts)was the shooter -- not the victim.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)of the interview/protest in front of the mayors house.
Whaaaaattttt???? Back up cops rushed to aid The Shooter??? No one attended to the woman and her kid?
Nauseating is too mild a word for all this.
calimary
(81,507 posts)They all hurried to him and tried to comfort him. Left HER in the back of the cop car and her fiance shot and killed in the front seat of her car. Certainly nobody was bothering to check on him.
forgotmylogin
(7,533 posts)if "aiding" the shooter meant calming him down and de-stressing the situation so he wouldn't shoot into the car again where there was obviously an innocent child, I get it. I'm hoping at least one of them immediately called for medical backup as well.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)But that was the girlfriend being interviewed. She didn't sound like the attention to the cop was for public safety, but I guess it could have been. I dunno. Clearly though, no one gave a crap about her, her kid and her partner that had just been murdered right in her lap.
pnwmom
(108,995 posts)with his gun aimed at the victim while the girlfriend calmly reported what was going on. I could hear another officer saying comforting things to the shooter -- not saying "put your gun down now!"
Or not grabbing the shooter from behind and disarming him.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)"Us vs them" mentality
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)whathehell
(29,095 posts)This TRULY MUST STOP!!!
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)and have since since the video on line.
Earlier he was simply an anonymous black man who was murdered. This makes it far more personal, and as if I knew him.
Which is actually the point. It's so easy to gloss over the murders of people who have no connection to us, especially if they are of a different race, ethnicity, or simply live a very long way away. But if it can be personalized, as this has, he becomes connected to me. The fact that he's black and I'm white disappears. He's a man who could have been in my life: a brother, a cousin, an in-law.
The sad thing about everything connected to "war" is that it depends on demonizing and, more importantly, dehumanizing the enemy. Without that demonizing and humanizing it's very difficult to persuade people to kill the enemy. This is why programs to bring children of "enemies" together can be effective.
Right now the bombings that have been occurring depend very tightly on that dehumanizing and demonizing. If you understand that those you want to kill are people just like you, your parents, your children, your cousins, you will find it hard to kill them. But if you can transform them into "the other" you can kill at will.
I also think there's an anthropological issue here, In our distant past we tended to live in small groups, maybe 30-40 humans. That was our core group, the ones we were most tightly affiliated with. We also hooked up on a regular basis with several other such small groups, topping out at best at a couple of hundred. Beyond that, we had no sense of affiliation, connection, or affinity. Even though in the modern world many of us belong to very large groups, I honestly think that at our core we can best connect to small groups of 30-40.
I can't think of a solution to this problem, other than education, deliberate training, helping us to understand that our core allegiance could easily be to a much larger group. Yes, many of us feel that core allegiance to the larger group, but I'd argue that most of us are still caught in the earlier, primitive stage of the much smaller group identity/allegiance. It's possible that human evolution is simply working against us here, but I hope that if enough people become aware of this problem, that it can be solvable.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Odin2005
(53,521 posts)The officer will claim that he panicked and "feared for his life", that is BS and is the usual excuse given when the cops decide to murder a black guy they decide is too "uppity" (in this case being that Castile daring to be a black guy with a CCW permit).
Chemisse
(30,817 posts)White men who legally carry a weapon are 'good guys with guns'; black men, on the other hand, are 'armed,' and inevitably 'the bad guys.'
It is pre-judging at its worst. This officer may not have done this intentionally. He and others, are allowing their prejudices to control their emotions - and their actions.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)I don't think he intended to kill him because he had a gun or because he was a black man with a gun. I think he killed him because he was a afraid a black man with a gun wanted to kill him. And that is racist profiling allowed by the police department.
This is what needs to change. This man had a legally licensed weapon and was only trying to inform the officer, so it wouldn't become an issue, and he was killed for it. Because as soon as he (a black man) said he had a gun, it WAS an issue.
And that is racism.
forgotmylogin
(7,533 posts)when confronted by a non-aggressive couple and child he pulls over for a busted tail light, he needs to be dismissed and banned from any profession that carries weapons whether he is prosecuted or not.
calimary
(81,507 posts)What I'm most afraid of is that this is another white cop, like Darren Wilson (the now-former cop who shot young Michael Brown in Ferguson MO), who will somehow wriggle out of being held to account. This guy will probably get off, too. And where's Timothy Loehmann now? He's the cop who shot that child, Tamir Rice, without even stopping to think for a moment. Has he EVER been brought to justice?
Btw - I looked up Tamir Rice on Wikipedia. You're gonna love this part:
"Police officers involved[edit]
In the aftermath of the shooting, media outlets reported on the background of the police officers involved. Both officers were placed on administrative leave.[34]
On December 28, 2015, Grand Jury returned their decision declining to indict the police officers.[35]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice
kiri
(796 posts)This 'leave' is in no way a punishment or even a reprimand. Some cops actually use this on their job resumes as a sign of being tough and aggressive.
On leave, they get a paycheck, can sleep late, never go to work, fly to Hawaii---what's not to love?
forgotmylogin
(7,533 posts)When that involves a potential crime, the government should capture 70% of the employee's income and hold it until it is determined whether they are coming back to work or not. It should not be an opportunity for vacation.
calimary
(81,507 posts)I would HOPE that one of the many things that authorities actually do tackle is the problem of the information sharing. When that rogue cop with the control issues
( "In the aftermath of the shooting, it was reported that Timothy Loehmann, in his previous job as a police officer in the Cleveland suburb of Independence, had been deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.[19]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice )
can just transfer to another department or another police squad and pick up with his emotional instability and lack of fitness for duty, that does NOT solve ANYTHING!!!!!!!! That stuff HAS TO go ON that officer's record, and it HAS to be transferrable to whoever he or she is trying to get a new job with - PARTICULARLY if it's another sort of law enforcement or security-guard type job where the potential for firearm use is part of that job, or firearms are part of the equipment for that job. No gun range jobs, either! The point needs to be - people like that, who have itchy trigger fingers or short fuses or other emotional shit going on - HAVE NO BUSINESS being in jobs that include access or exposure to firearms.
That information HAS TO be on the record, in their files, and automatically transferrable from former employer to potential employer in law enforcement or security details or any of that. NOBODY with emotional instability should be employed in ANY area that involves access or exposure to guns!!!!
From the coverage of that particular story, the Tamir Rice killing, what I remember was that the new police dept Loehmann hired into - had no idea about his full background, his emotional instability, or his having been deemed unfit for duty. My memory may be faulty on that, but I do remember that was a rather strong takeaway for me, from the coverage of that tragedy. I do distinctly remember reacting - GOD! If they'd only known BEFORE they hired him!!! But it was reported as "he flamed out in the first police department, so he simply moved and applied for a job in a second police department, and minimal checking was done because he'd come from the earlier police department, so he was presumed to be okay."
Again, my memory could be faulty on that one, but then again, too, you have to consider how a lot of these police departments, and many of our law enforcement organizations are NOT interconnected and do not share info, oftentimes because they can't. They don't have the electronic infrastructure, they're not modernized in information sharing, there hasn't been the funding to bring them up to date. I have heard that SO DAMNED OFTEN about government work. The money isn't there to modernize! The funding Is NOT There! Shit, I've heard this again and again about the federal government, how their computers are old, their mainframes are old, things operate more slowly because the technology has not been upgraded or updated. Costs too much. Congress won't do anything in general and this inertia has just metastasized everywhere. And besides, nobody wants to pay taxes so there is no funding for stuff like this anyway.
Because, remember, we all need to starve the government until it shrinks down so small that we can drown it in the bathtub. You can thank that vile pile of vomit-covered shit, anti-tax hard-on grover norquist, and all his nice little republi-CON "let's keep those cuts a'comin'" apostles and disciples for that. They say money is the root of all evil? Well, funding cuts comprise another root of that same evil!
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)the Officer was Lawyered up,and that being Tom Kelly. And reading TV interviews from local P.D's Chief and EX-Chief,something went terrible wrong with Training or Personnel Issues,or is it Might is Right and I and my men have a Badge and crap happens.
There is more here than what is being reported.