Wow, look at all this text.
No, really. Look at it.
All of it.
Because you know damn well when I said the cop murdered someone I didn't mean he was convicted of the crime of murder. That's the entire point, actually. Its just a thing so you can tell me I'm wrong without having to go after the substance of what I said.
Look, we can't just punish a guy "beacause blotsfan says he deserves it," no matter how strongly you believe it. The rest of the world is not going to elect you the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes "murder." The same goes for every other individual in the world, even me. No one person can be the ultimate arbiter of that sort of thing, because it would too easily fall victim to caprice (or bribery, or Alzheimer's, or whatever else). That's why there are laws. That's why even people like the Vegas shooter (had he lived) would still have been put on trial
even though there was overwhelming evidence at the scene, he was caught in the act, everyone saw him do it, etc.
There's no doubt that this particular cop committed a homicide. None. This isn't OJ, we all know this guy killed the other guy. It's on the Internet, on dash cam, witnesses were sitting
right there, etc. This case hinged on procedure and
mens rea. The jury did not acquit because they felt Yanez was a poor, misguided sheep who had lost his way and merely needed a second chance anything like that, he was acquitted because the jury felt the State did not fulfill its requirements for pursuing the specific charges leveled against Mr. Yanez, and so they therefore could not impose the sentence the State requested. Thus ended the
criminal case (for now, I guess...I doubt the State will ever file new charges).
Lest you think that there was no pound of flesh to be had, the city
did have to cough up almost 3 million dollars in a
civil settlement, though I have no idea how they determined this total as an "appropriate" amount.
I know, I know...you're going to be all, "...but this solves nothing! Where is the admission of responsibility? Where is the
Justice?" And the short of it is that everyone
connected with this case (this is important!) has been satisfied. The State did its thing (and failed). The family sued and got money. Everyone who could do a thing did a thing and got a thing, even if it wasn't a thing they wanted. YOU are still outraged, but you have no
standing in this situation and so even though you are unhappy about it, you have no means to effect any sort of change of outcome. This may frustrate you, but this is a
good thing because the State should not have to fight off the literal
millions of follow-up lawsuits that would be filed just because some guy who heard about it on the Internet or in the newspaper thought that things should've gone differently.
NOW...
You
do have the power to affect how the Law treats
future officers who abuse their power and position, or who are not able to handle the responsibilities of their job. But you do
not do this by organizing a mob to go burn down a precinct, or by assassinating an officer, or even by yelling at someone you've never met on an Internet forum. You do it by effecting change in the laws you believe are unjust.
Everything else is just discussion, and changes nothing.
Of course, if what you were after was an admission of sympathy, you can have that from me with no strings attached. I think that Yanez got off too easy for what was (at best) a lapse in judgement, and both of us will no doubt agree that it was a tragedy that someone who was probably doing his best to comply with regulations got killed as a result of that lapse, but Castile was nowhere near a member of my monkeysphere, nor do we share much other commonality (aside from being male gun/car owners, maybe? But that's a stretch), so the amount of caring I'm going to do for this specific human life
is going to be lower than that of my family, my friends, etc. If I seem distant about this, it's because he was, well...distant.
--Patrick
