When a St. Anthony police officer pulled over the car that Philando Castile was driving on Wednesday night, he claimed it was because of a broken tail light. According to a police scanner audio clip that may have been a lie.
A viewer of KARE TV in the Twin Cities of Minnesota provided the clip to that station’s news department. The station has tried to confirm that the audio is authentic but, so far, officials have not responded. Maybe they’re huddling and trying to decide what to do because the audio is pretty damning.
KARE has identified the license plate which Officer Jeronimo Yanez gave to dispatch as the same plate number of Castile’s car. They also noted that the location and time do correspond to the site and time of the stop.
The man in the audio, tentatively identified as Officer Yanez, says:
I’m going to stop a car. I’m going to check IDs. I have reason to pull it over. The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just ‘cause of the wide-set nose.
That sure sounds like racial profiling to me. But, even more odd, how on earth could he have seen Castile’s nose from behind the car? The robbery being referenced isn’t clearly stated but it appears to have been a gas station robbery that happened on July 2 in Lauderdale. But the description given of those robbers — two men with dreadlocks — doesn’t begin to describe Castile and his girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds.
Ninety seconds pass and dispatch hears:
Officer: Shots fired Larpenteur and Fry. (the location of the shooting per police statement)
Dispatch: Copy you just heard it? … You just heard the shots fired?
Officer: (screaming) Code 3! Shots fired.
Dispatch: Copy shots fired Larpenteur and Fry. Do you need medics?
Officer: Code 3! (Use lights and siren)
Dispatch: Copy. Medics — code 3 to Larpenteur and Fry.
Officer: One adult female taken into custody. Driver at gunpoint.
No mention of the child who watched the whole thing play out in front of her eyes.
When KARE played the audio for the Castile family, Clarence Castile, the murdered man’s uncle told the station:
That is what is next. So we can get an unbiased account of what happened step by step. Dash board cams. Audio or video the police may have in their possession. We have to get my nephew buried and laid to rest in a good and honorable way. And after that, that is when the fight begins. That is when we are going to start working to get serious justice.
Philando Castile was not a criminal. He had never been a gang member, had no arrest record. He worked in a local school in the cafeteria. He loved the kids and they loved him. That night he had done nothing wrong. The tail light of his car was working fine. It was used as a red herring so that he could be pulled over. He was shot while trying to comply with Officer Yanez’s request for I.D. and, ultimately, died because of the width of his nose. His nose! If that’s not racial profiling, I don’t know what is.
Here is the report from KARE-TV in Minneapolis/St. Paul
Featured Image by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images