The acquittal of officer Jeronimo Yanez in the shooting death of Philandro Castile got off in a manner that supporters of the Castile family had hoped would not come to pass. However, many who have been studying these types of phenomenon over the years were not surprised with the unfortunate outcome.
When Philandro Castile was shot and killed by a Minnesota police officer in 2016, the video of which was broadcast throughout the digital ether, it was yet another killing of a black male. Castile, who was carrying a legal firearm and informed the officer of this, was shot after requesting permission to reach for his identification.
Even when officer Yanez was charged with manslaughter, I knew the case wasn’t going to stick. Over one hundred years of history, and not cyncism, led me to correctly guess that there would be no justice for Philandro Castile or Lavish Reynolds, the mother of his children who videotaped the aftermath of the grisly scene of her man bleeding to death.
The verdict to acquit came on the fifth day of deliberations as we head into the Father’s Day weekend, and comes almost one month after an Oklahoma police officer was acquitted in the death of yet another black man. Last year prosecutors chose not to charge Minneapolis cops in the killing of Jordan Clark.
There is no justice for innocent black men and people who are murdered at the hand of law enforcement. So what else is new?
