Video of police killing Philando Castile released

No video on the internet has angered and bothered me as much as this one lately. This is the police dashcam video of the killing of Philando Castile.

Philando Castile is the man who was stopped by police last year in Minnesota for a broken tail light only to be killed when notifying the officer that he was licensed to carry. At the time, what made this event extraordinary was that his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, live-streamed the entire stop and shooting on Facebook Live (I won't post that video here, but you can find it easily).

A week ago, the officer who shot Philando, (now-former) Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez, was acquitted in the killing.

How does that happen when the entire altercation was filmed not only by a direct witness but by police dashcam as well? No part of me believes that a cop in similar situations is ever fully at ease -- after all, being a police officer is a dangerous job in many ways -- but I believe that the dashcam video here shows a poor sense of judgement by somebody in law enforcement who should have been trained to be more restrained than the average licensed gun carrier.

Though there was dashboard camera video of the events, as well as the live-stream video that Ms. Reynolds began taking after the shooting, there was no video clearly revealing the crucial moments in the front seat of Mr. Castile’s car — and how precisely he had moved his hands before the officer fired.

The voice of Philando just moments before the shooting telling the officer calmly that he was carrying legally is just heartbreaking.