JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Jeronimo Yanez in a 2014 photo.

I’m about as liberal as people get, as most of you know, but there’s a particular aspect of the shooting of Philando Castile outside St. Paul Wednesday that casts a cloud over the actions and judgment of 32-year-old Castile.

This morning, the officer who shot Castile at point-blank range has been identified as Jeronimo Yanez, who has worked for the St. Anthony, Minnesota, police department for four years. (I have not been able to find his age, but he appears young in a photo from 2014.)

Yanez and his partner, Officer Joseph Kauser, have been placed on administrative leave.

Much attention has been focused — and rightly so — on the live Facebook video that his Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds posted in the minutes after the shooting, when Castile was apparently drawing his last breaths.

But let’s take a closer look at some of the factors working on both sides of this tragedy.

:: Castile was not some punk, thug or dangerous person. He was a 14-year employee of the St. Paul public school system. He worked in nutrition services and had been promoted to supervisor two years ago. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Castile had only misdemeanors on his criminal record.

:: As far as policing goes, this was as podunk as it gets. The stop occurred in the town of Falcon Heights, just northwest of St. Paul. But Falcon Heights, a town of 5,500, is so small it relies on neighboring St. Anthony — population 8,200 — for police services. It’s understandable that cops in towns like those are so bored that they have all the time in the world to deal with people driving around with broken tail lights (as was the case with Castile).

:: And, let’s face it, Yanez might be the type of cop who was always looking to swing into action — particularly if some “suspicious” black people are seen driving in a white suburb. There’s a lot of truth to what Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, told CNN: “I think he was just black in the wrong place.”

On the other hand:

:: The precise circumstances make me wonder why Castile acted as he did and said what he said when he said it.

The New York Times’ news account, which is based on what the girlfriend said at a news conference on Thursday, goes like this:

As he’s reaching for his back pocket wallet, to produce his license and registration, “he lets the officer know, ‘Officer, I have a firearm on me,’ ” she (Diamond Reynolds) said. “I began to yell, ‘But he’s licensed to carry.’ After that, he (Yanez) began to take off shots — bah, bah, bah, bah.”

Philando Castile

About those particular few seconds…I am anxious to know if Yanez already had his gun out. I tend to suspect he did, otherwise how could he have fired off three or four rounds so quickly? But why would he have his gun out — for a broken tail light stop — unless he was “primed for action” as I suggested earlier.

Nevertheless — and this is the most significant defense of the officer’s action…Why in the hell would a guy say “Officer, I have a firearm on me” at the very moment he’s reaching into a pocket????

That was, frankly, dumb, but is apparently exactly what happened — not according to police but the victim’s girlfriend, who was right there.

Putting myself in Castile’s shoes — and presuming I had a gun on me — I would have kept my hands in front or me, or up, and told the officer I had a gun on my person, and I would have told him exactly where it was — pocket, waistband, whatever — and that I had a license to carry it.

I would not have announced I had a firearm and, at the same time, reached for my wallet.

…Another mitigating element, in my view, is Diamond Reynolds — as calm as she was in the moments after the shooting, when she was streaming the video — was shouting something when Castile announced he had a gun. So…you’ve got a guy reaching toward a pocket after saying he has a gun, plus a woman shouting something. It had to be chaotic.

Yanez, I’m convinced, was young, inexperienced and overly anticipative of trouble. And yet, Philando Castile and Diamond Reynolds made the simultaneous mistakes of reaching and shouting when they should have been thinking, talking quietly and remaining perfectly still.