The cop who killed Philando Castile said the following words, as recorded from a police scanner, just prior to his shooting of Castile (as I’ve covered in my two most recent diaries):
KARE 11 has attempted to confirm the authenticity of the recording with police officials, but so far they have not responded.
...
“I’m going to stop a car,” the officer says on the recording. “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 officer says. “The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just ‘cause of the wide set nose,” the officer continues.
At this point, the police should have either confirmed or denied the authenticity of the police scanner recording. They have not. I can therefore only assume that the recording is authentic.
As I noted in my last diary:
So many questions! Where the hell is the national media on this?
The description of “robbery suspects” said one of them had “a wide set nose”? Is that just racist profiling code for “Black person”? Yanez saw a car on the road and determined that the driver had a “wide set nose” matching a supposed description of a robbery suspect?
Now Castile’s relatives have responded to the police scanner recording:
Philando Castile’s uncle, Clarence Castile, called the traffic stop an example of racial profiling.
“I just thought it was kind of insane to pull somebody over saying they matched a robbery suspect by having flared nostrils,” Clarence Castile said. “It is kind of hard to see flared nostrils from a car.
This story needs to receive national exposure.