ST PAUL — The fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer during a traffic stop fit a longstanding pattern of disparate, unfair and even violent treatment of black people, Minnesota’s governor said Thursday, after millions of people watched the bloody, dying man in a grisly video recorded by his girlfriend and streamed live moments after the shooting.
“Would this have happened if the driver were white, if the passengers were white?” Gov. Mark Dayton asked at a news conference. “I don’t think it would have.”
He said he had heard from many black people, including some in positions of authority, about “how they’ve been pulled over, singled out,” in a way that white people would not have. “I’ve been told by very respectable African-American leaders that they understand how this dynamic goes on.”
Mr. Dayton and members of the state’s congressional delegation asked for the Justice Department to investigate the death of Philando Castile, 32, who died hours after the department took over the investigation into the fatal police shooting, also captured on video, of another black man in Baton Rouge, La. The governor said he had spoken with Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama; and Vanita Gupta, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
But the department responded that for now, it would monitor the state investigation and offer assistance, rather than conduct its own investigation.
The deadly encounter occurred Wednesday night in the city of Falcon Heights, just northwest of St. Paul. The graphic video from Minnesota showed Mr. Castile, who had been shot several times, slumping toward the woman who was recording the scene. As she did so, her 4-year-old daughter sat in the back seat and an officer stood just outside the driver’s side window, still aiming his gun at the mortally wounded man at point-blank range.
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