UPDATE 3: NBC News now has a story [JUL 12 2016, 12:19 PM ET], five days after the original airing of the audio:
Castile's family told the station that the officer's description sounded like racial profiling. The officers involved are white, and Castile was black.
"It's hard to see a flared nostril from a car," Castile's uncle, Clarence Castile, said.
He added, "That's not a good enough excuse to pull somebody over and then end up dead behind it."
UPDATE 2: Buzzfeed now has a story as well, though with a misleading headline:
Police Audio: Philando Castile Pulled Over For Matching “Wide-Set Nose” Suspect Description
There is, in fact, no evidence that there was ever any “suspect description” to be “matched” of a person with a “wide-set nose”. That “description”, as far as we know, was entirely the invention and fabrication of Yanez, the cop who killed Philando Castile.
UPDATE 1: Minutes ago [10:09 pm EST] ABCnews posted this story:
Cops May Have Thought Philando Castile Was a Robbery Suspect, Noting 'Wide-Set Nose,' Dispatch Audio Indicates
The story stupidly notes:
In the audio, which was obtained by ABC News today, an officer can be heard saying that he is going to pull over a car to check identifications and that he has "reason to pull it over."
Nevertheless, that bit of misleading writing aside (the audio has been publicly available for four days) I’m glad to see the national media are finally covering this. I look forward to other major outlets following suit.
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Original diary:
The story of the racial profiling by the cop who killed Philando Castile in Minnesota is finally getting some traction in the media, though still limited. (Story covered here in these previous four diaries.)
The police scanner recording:
“I’m going to stop a car,” the officer tells dispatchers 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.
A minute and a half later, the recording captures the first report that there was a shooting.
The recording was aired a full four days ago by a Minnesota NBC affiliate. While none of the major national media outlets (CNN, NYTimes, WaPo, etc.) have yet seen fit to cover the story, a growing number of local outlets and alternative media have now written stories about it.
Earlier, Gawker, The Root, and a few other sites covered it. Now HuffPo, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Atlanta Blackstar, BET, and the Grio also have stories.
Keep letting people and major media outlets know that this story needs to be covered more widely.
While there will always be those who want to silence the story and claim that those of us covering it are “making far too much out of this”, the fact is the truth will come out.
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Postscript:
While I wrote about this in a previous diary, I just want to reiterate why it is important that this story is told.
The “wide set nose” recording has until now been ignored by the national media, but for days now they did believe it appropriate to cover another claim and let it lead the narrative:
What has been in the news are the disinformation propaganda claims that the shooting was not about race, put out by Yanez’s lawyer:
St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez was reacting to "the presence of that gun and the display of that gun" when he opened fire on Castile, Minneapolis attorney Thomas Kelly told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate on how Castile displayed the weapon or what led up to the deadly traffic stop.
Yanez "was reacting to the actions of the driver," Kelly said. "This had nothing to do with race. This had everything to do with the presence of a gun."