Scrolling through Instagram early Thursday morning after seeing a
stream of photos of babies and beach scenes I stumbled on a short video
clip of a wounded black man, Philando Castile, lying in the passenger
seat of a car wearing a blood-soaked white T-shirt as an officer's gun
pointed at him and his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds' camera phone rolled.
Moments after Castile was shot by a police
officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota Reynolds streamed the events live
on Facebook. So far 5.6 million people viewed the video of Castile
leaning over moaning before he died, the officer yelling and Reynolds
giving a step-by-step commentary as her young daughter sat in the
backseat. The video was shared more than 317,000 times.
By using social media to record the actions
immediately after the shooting Reynolds took the public to the scene
quicker than any news crew could. The public didn't have to wait for an
official state release of dash cam footage. They saw the raw, unedited
video immediately from the scene. Reynolds' social media broadcast
revealed and recorded the last moments of Castile's life and the
aftermath of the officer's actions in a way we wouldn't ordinarily get
to see without social media.
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