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On Tuesday, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension 

 in the shooting death of Philando Castile, the black driver killed during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights last July by St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez. 

 
Among the photos and reports and interviews in the release was the dashcam video from Yanez's squad car. It is the only video and audio — the officer was wearing a microphone on his uniform — of the shooting and the moments leading up to it.
 

Yanez went on trial for the shooting, facing second-degree manslaughter and two felony firearms charges. A Ramsey County jury, which watched the video several times during the trial, found him not guilty on all three charges last week. 

 
Before the document release, the public had only seen a selective transcript of that video, embedded in the charging documents filed by Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. 

The death of Philando Castile and the trial of Jeronimo Yanez

The dashcam video

On Tuesday, the public could watch the video for the first time.

 
MPR News asked two use-of-force experts to watch the video and offer impressions of what they saw: 

 is a retired Minneapolis police sergeant and training officer for the department.

 is a firearms trainer and consultant from Pennsylvania who was called by the defense to testify as a use-of-force expert during the trial.

Editor's note: The videos below are difficult to watch, with violence and offensive language.

Squad car video: Officer Jeronimo Yanez pulls over Philando Castile


A white Oldsmobile driving west on Larpenteur Avenue has a brake light out, and the St. Anthony police officer patrolling that stretch of road has radioed to his partner that he thinks the driver looks like a robbery suspect. 
 

The officer, Jeronimo Yanez, pulls behind the car and turns on his lights. The car pulls into the right turn lane and stops almost immediately. 

The officer steps up to the driver's window. His partner, Joseph Kauser, has caught up to him and is standing toward the back of the car, on the passenger side. 
 

Life, interrupted


"The reason I pulled you over — your brake lights are out" — specifically, the top and driver's side brake lights, Yanez tells the driver, Philando Castile. 
 


 
After Yanez has walked up to the window and explains the reason for the stop, he politely asks Castile the standard traffic-stop question: "Do you have your license and insurance?" 

 
As part of his training work, Quinn said he uses color coding to help officers identify and describe their level of situational awareness. The codes move from green — the zone where most people exist, most of the time — to yellow to red to black. 

In the green zone, you're calm and generally not very aware. This is checking-your-phone mode: "No worries, no cares, you're not really aware of what's going on around you, and you really don't care," Quinn said. 
 

But officers on duty, Quinn said, need to reside in the yellow zone. They need to be vigilant, acutely aware of their surroundings, and watching for people, their partner's safety, potential violations. 


"You're aware of what's going on around you, you're trying to keep track of your partner, people on the street, people driving, all that stuff. It's not a hyper vigilance but being very vigilant to what's going on," he said. 

 
As he watched the video, Quinn said Yanez appeared to be in that zone, an appropriate place for an officer making a traffic stop.

Castile hands Yanez his insurance card, which the officer tucks into his uniform pocket. 

 
"Sir, I have to tell you I do have a ..." Castile starts telling the officer calmly.
 

 
"...a firearm on me," Castile finishes.

At the mention of a firearm, Yanez responds with, "OK. Don't reach for it, then."

From the dashcam video, you can see Yanez reaching into the car, as Diamond Reynolds, Castile's girlfriend, says from the passenger seat that her boyfriend is not pulling his gun.

 
"Don't pull it out!" Yanez shouts, unholstering his weapon.

 
When Yanez took the stand during his trial this month, the prosecution asked in cross-examination if he had heard Castile say, "I'm not pulling it out," after he said he had a firearm. 
 

Yanez told the court, "by that time, I was focused on his hands. I was getting tunnel vision."


Yanez fires seven shots into the driver's side of the white Oldsmobile, five seconds after Philando Castile said the word "firearm."


Five of those bullets hit Philando Castile.

 
Kapelsohn said, when watching the video, Yanez's behavior, and how he handled the stop and the shooting, looked reasonable. 

"In fact, he probably waited longer than he perhaps should have, in order to be able to defend himself," he said. "But he didn't fire until he saw the gun, and at that point he has three-tenths of a second if someone was going to try to shoot him. Not that Mr. Castile was, but the officer doesn't know that, of course."
 

Castile is bleeding and moaning, buckled into the front seat.

Legs spread in a shooting stance, Yanez keeps his gun trained on Castile. He's screaming profanities and issuing orders to Diamond Reynolds, who's still sitting in the front passenger seat.

 
Just three seconds after the shooting, the Oldsmobile's rear passenger-side door opens. Reynolds' 4-year-old daughter has gotten out of her carseat and is letting herself out of the car, onto the sidewalk. Officer Kauser, Yanez's partner, steps in and scoops her up. 

It's at that point that Reynolds calmly turns on Facebook Live on her phone. Forty seconds after Yanez fires at Castile, she begins to stream what happens next. She explains to the camera what just happened.
 

Video reveals Castile girlfriend's agony after shooting


On the dashcam video, Yanez is still screaming, breathing heavily. Sirens scream into view. Other officers start arriving. They block off the street, and they try to get Yanez to move away from the driver's side window. He's still standing there, his gun pointed at Castile, who's still buckled into the front seat.

 
Another officer tells Yanez, "I'm going to take your spot," and Yanez walks out of the video's frame. Other officers struggle to get Castile out of the car. They eventually pull him by his arms onto the ground and begin to administer CPR.
 

Crime, Law and Justice

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On Tuesday, the dashcam video from the night St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile was released. MPR News asked two use-of-force experts to analyze what happened in the video.

View from Officer Jeronimo Yanez' squad car.

Use-of-force experts analyze Castile shooting video

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