One Cop, and Only One, Objects to Murder of Philando Castile

Remember Philando Castile, human being

"I watched the dash cam video. And it broke me. ... So today, I stand up and speak out, even if it means standing alone. To the family of Philando Castile, to those that loved him, and to everyone who watched that video and felt broken inside, I am sorry. This shouldn’t have happened. His life mattered."
-  Detective Angela Kamoske of the Madison, Wisconsin Police Department

Among the 1,000s of people cops have killed the last few years, the utter disregard for human life remains a constant over time.

On June 22, Mal Contends notes 569 people were killed by cop to that day. That's eight days ago.

As of June 29, 595 people were killed, (Killed by Police). By the end of the July 4 holiday weekend, well over 600 people will have been killed by cops.

What type of person is capable of aiming a weapon at someone and then pulling the trigger of a pistol with the intent of killing a human being in cold blood?

The truth is, from a first-person perspective, I will never understand the savage cowardice and anti-human psychology of a cop. So, I don't know the answer to this question.

One cannot reason and emphasize with killers. I mean I watch Dirty Harry and Tarantino movies and enjoy them, but not to the extent of running out and buying a 44 and killing somebody. The phantasm of achievement in film is fantasy. Most cops don't understand this.

More disturbing are the by-standers. Cops can do anything, anything, and the vast majority of people will watch silently or turn away, or meow that images of Mr. Castile shot dead, for example, are distasteful.

After the acquittal of the killer cop who gunned down Philando Castile, one cop objected publicly. One decent woman hurt by the reality that a family has been devastated.

Below is the text of the letter from Angela Kamoske, detective with the Madison, Wisconsin Police Department. The words of Ms. Kamoske offer hope decency will prevail.

The letter appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on June 25, 2017:

Philando Castile's Life Mattered

By Angela Kamoske

I have been a police officer for 19 years. I love my job and serving my community. I have learned over the course of my career to never assume anything. As I watched the events unfold on July 6, 2016, on a Facebook Live feed, I thought that there must be more that happened. There must have been such a threat that wasn’t captured on this video, that forced Officer Yanez to feel his only option was to shoot into a vehicle with a child in the back seat.

Over the past two days, I have listened to the audio interviews. I have read the documents. And then I watched the dash cam video. And it broke me. Officer Yanez was in a position that if he perceived a threat, he could have disengaged. He could have taken other steps to ensure everyone’s safety, and not have forced this outcome.

Shooting a seat-belted man, with a child in the back seat, was not the only option. Until those of us who wear the badge are willing to stand up and speak out when we see things that are wrong, and lead hard conversations, how can we ever expect change? How can we ever expect to rebuild trust within our communities? Barbecues and pick-up basketball games are nice, but that’s not going to do it. So today, I stand up and speak out, even if it means standing alone. To the family of Philando Castile, to those that loved him, and to everyone who watched that video and felt broken inside, I am sorry. This shouldn’t have happened. His life mattered.

Have a fun and safe holiday.

NYT Video Shows Police Execution of Philando Castile—Watch, Bear Witness, then Summer Fun

Four-year-old girl tried to calm her distraught mother,
Diamond Reynolds, after killer cop, Jeronimo Yanez,
gunned down Philando Castile in 2016 in Minnesota, (CNN).
Yanez was acquitted in June 2017.

Why victims of American police state don't take to local paper or social media and complain: Fear of the police

Update: Madison, Wisconsin police officer, Angela Kamoske, reacts in Minnesota paper.
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There is embedded in our political culture a fascistic character of the American citizenry.

This unthinking tendency manifests post-911 as the cult of the police—an evangelical, ideological deference to law enforcement that is so powerful, police can execute a citizen in cold blood on video and the majority of the white populace will applaud or look away.

But this cult is of the most insidious strain, mutated into unacknowledged fear of the police and a pathological aversion to thinking.

I joined a small, local Facebook group in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, curious to see how this liberal segregated community of 25,000 would respond to an image of the police killing of Philando Castile from Minnesota in the days following the acquittal of the killer cop, Jeronimo Yanez.

The Castile image is of the man's blood staining a white t-shirt, presumably exit wounds sustained after bullets pierced Castile's heart.

Facebook comments ranged from an admonishing complaint that the Castile image is "distasteful" to a demand, (subsequently granted), that the image of Philando Castile be taken down.

Distasteful. No comments were posted criticizing this murder, the killer cop, acclaiming the humanity of Castile or expressing sympathy for the Castile family.

This is roughly what I expected.

This Summer Americans will witness 100s of new police killings of the citizenry, most of which will meet with the overwhelming approval of white America, cheered on by the Trump administration, (Cop Block, Killed by Police).

Ever wonder why victims of the American police state do not take to the local paper or social media and complain? The answer is fear of the police in the land of the free and home of the brave, a well-founded fear.

Consider. Would anyone after being terrorized or witnessing terror inflicted by the police complain to the local Fusion Center that police are terrorizing innocents? How about a young, black woman profiled, harassed, demeaned, arrested and traumatized by police? Now, consider a complaint to the Fusion Center: Hey, the police are terrorizing me, what can you do about it?

Is this really the only possible society attainable? Orwell would puke were he alive.

Today is June 25, Sunday. Over the weekend four more people were killed by cops, (Killed by Police).

One hopes the American people live life happy and have a great Summer. It's truly beautiful outside.

But please first bare witness and view Yousur Al-hlou's narrative video in the New York Times of the police execution of Philando Castile, then rock out the Summer.

Consider as well, reading two of the great anti-fascist works of the 20th century: They Thought They Were FreeThe Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, (University of Chicago Press. ©1955), Warrant for Genocide: the Myth of the Jewish World-conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (Harper and Row, 1967), by Norman Cohn.

From Milton Mayer:

'What no one seemed to notice,' said a colleague of mine, a philologist, 'was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

'What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

'This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.'

Consider as well Glenn Greenwald's  No Place to Hide, Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.

Eliminationist Rhetoric of the Most Deadly

Four-year-old girl tried to calm her distraught mother,
Diamond Reynolds, after cop, Jeronimo Yanez, gunned
down Philando Castile in July 2016 in Minnesota, (CNN).
Yanez was acquitted in June 2017.

Stop police death squads. How many must die?

No doubt the Minnesota cop unions got a nice laugh out of the acquittal of killer cop, Jeronimo Yanez.

Sick, heartless killer cops like Yanez walk away from the shattered lives of their brutality and a well-vetted collection of jurors watch a black man, Philando Castile, murdered on video and inform black Americans: Tough, your lives don't matter.

This is the verdict from Minnesota. Few minority Americans were surprised.

If you were a cop in Minnesota, what would you do? Would you speak up, write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and say: 'Philando Castile was not killed in my name, I do not support the killer, Jeronimo Yanez. My heart and my support go to the family of Philando Castile?'

Such decency is unthinkable from a cop, but how about us? Who will condemn killing of our fellows?

If you are a cop anywhere, what would you do? Speak out? Any cop reading this piece today. Put your name to text, identify yourself as a cop, and compose a comment. I'll run it.

Today is June 22, 2017, roughly half-way through the calendar year. As of this date, 569 people have been killed by cops. By Dec. 31, 2017 people killed by cops will exceed 1,000. You can count on it.

Philando Castile was shot through the chest and killed by cop
to the approval of fellow cops and Minnesota jury. Cops
got another one.
Remember Philando Castile, human being.

From the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild suggesting protection from killer cops in 2016. No such protection has been adopted to this date:

By National Lawyers Guild - Minnesota Chapter:

The National Lawyers Guild - Minnesota Chapter unconditionally condemns in the strongest possible terms the murder of Philando Castile by St. Anthony Village police officer Jeronimo Yanez. The NLG expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to Mr. Castile’s family and loved ones.

It is a tremendous outrage that the repeated unjustifiable police killings, especially of African American males, have become such common knowledge yet continue unabated. While no one deserves to die at the hands of law enforcement, there is no pretext for police to attempt to rationalize the murder of Mr. Castile because he had so clearly done nothing wrong, was an exemplary citizen, and the horrendous death and police indifference to the effects of their actions was so painfully captured on cell phone video.

The NLG demands that government leaders end their pattern of enforcing the continued deadly status quo by failing to take any concrete action to hold police accountable or enact any meaningful reforms. The salience of this latest atrocity must spur immediate action to hold the responsible police officer accountable and initiate systemic change to end the serial police killings as well as the larger dynamic of police abuse and oppression in communities of color. The NLG recognizes that the most affected communities must have a voice in the specific changes to made, but calls for the following actions to be taken immediately:

1. A special independent prosecutor must be appointed to investigate and bring criminal charges against the murderer in this case. The special prosecutor must be independent of police influence, and have access to funding needed to hire investigators, experts, associates and cover other expenses needed to conduct a full investigation and prosecution. Responses to previous police shootings have repeatedly and invariably demonstrated that elected and career prosecutors are too beholden to police interests to be capable to delivering justice. The Ramsey County Attorney, the governor, and other appropriate officials must collaborate to make the special independent prosecutor a reality.

2. The office of an independent prosecutor must be permanently established to investigate and prosecute cases of deadly force and other abusive police conduct.

3. Minnesota law must be amended so that police officers have no more authority to use deadly force than other citizens. Specifically, Minnesota Statute § 609.066 which authorizes use of deadly force by peace officers must be repealed.

4. A special civilian commission must be established to propose specific, comprehensive and systemic reforms to police powers, policies, and governance. A majority of the commission must include representatives of communities disproportionately harmed by police abuse.