Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced [press release, PDF] Wednesday that charges [complaint, PDF] are being filed against the officer who shot Philando Castile [JURIST report] during a Minneapolis traffic stop in July, which was broadcasted on Facebook. After months of protests, Officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree murder and felony discharge of a dangerous weapon. The attorney’s office believe that Officer Yanez was not reasonable in using deadly force when he fired several rounds into the vehicle which contained Philando, his girlfriend and their daughter.

When evaluating the reasonableness of a police officer’s use of deadly force, we must take into account that police officers are often required to react quickly—in tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving situations. To justify the use of deadly force, it is not enough, however, for the police officer to merely express a subjective fear of death or great bodily harm. Unreasonable fear cannot justify the use of deadly force. The use of deadly force must be objectively reasonable and necessary, given the totality of the circumstances.Based upon our thorough and exhaustive review of the facts of this case, it is my conclusion that the use of deadly force by Officer Yanez was not justified and that sufficient facts exist to prove this to be true. Accordingly, we filed a criminal complaint this morning in Ramsey County District Court charging Officer Yanez with Second Degree Manslaughter in the death of Philando Castile and two felony counts of Dangerous Discharge of a Firearm that endangered the safety of Diamond Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter, the two passengers in the car.

Issues of police and community interactions continues as a domestic human rights issue. The city of Cleveland on Wednesday submitted [JURIST report] a revised use-of-force policy to Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. of the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio who is overseeing an agreement by the city to reform the police department. Cincinnati trial judge Megan Shanahan declared [JURIST report] a mistrial on Saturday after the jury declared that it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on murder and manslaughter charges in a case involving the shooting of the unarmed Samuel DuBose, a black man, by white Police Officer Raymond Tensing in July. The Pennsylvania Senate in October approved [JURIST report] a contentious bill [legislative materials] that allows public officials to be charged with a crime for identifying a police officer who used force against someone. The US Department of Justice released a statement [JURIST report] in October outlining plans to collect data on the use of force by police officers from across the nation.