"Stop reaching" isn't unclear or contradictory. Yes, anyone in the US - or any country quite frankly - pulled over by the police should follow instruction. It's not a hard concept to grasp.
And the four year old is irrelevant in this scenario. Her being there does not and should not alter the officers judgement to discharge his weapon. It would only do so if she was in the way. She wasn't.
Ideally, the US would be like the UK and be largely unarmed, or if they have to have armed police then certainly not an armed populace - but it isn't, and therefore my preferences have to go out of the window and I look at the situation as it is. And the end result is an armed police officer has asked an admittedly armed driver to not reach for something, and the driver has continued to reach anyway.
The courts have seen it that way too - but because the Twitterati have decided every cop who kills a black person did it because they simply love doing it, then it is seen as a corrupt decision and another example of the system "failing".
The legal system in the US is broken in many ways, but you have to choose the correct sticks to beat it with - this isn't one of those situations.
Read the testimony again
9:05:55 – 9:06:02 p.m. — Yanez said “Okay,
don’t reach for it, then.” Castile responded: “I’m… I’m … [inaudible] reaching…,” before being again interrupted by Yanez, who said “
Don’t pull it out.” Castile responded, “I’m not pulling it out,” and Reynolds said, “He’s not pulling it out.” Yanez screamed: “
Don’t pull it out,” and pulled his gun with his right hand. Yanez fired seven shots in the direction of Castile in rapid succession. The seventh shot was fired at 9:06:02 p.m. Kauser did not touch or remove his gun.
The officer did not say "stop reaching", which could be interpreted as don't move at all. He said "don't reach for it"/"don't pull it out". Yes, it is clear that he is telling him not to reach for "it" ie the gun but it is not clear that he is telling him not to move at all or to not comply with his original request for the license - a "don't move" instruction or "hands on the wheel" or "keep your hands where I can see them" would be a lot clearer if that was the message he was trying to convey and are all phrases that are commonly used in traffic stops precisely to be clear.
And as I said he gave Castile no time in which understand that he might be meaning "don't move", he could have drawn his weapon and aimed it without firing, at least for a couple of seconds. There isn't even any evidence that Castile was still moving after the first "don't pull it out" as Castile says "I'm not pulling it out".
Of course the presence of the girl should alter the judgment of whether to discharge his weapon as gunshots can ricochet or pass through people/seats. At the very least it should have meant he paused to accurately aim before firing or only shoot once rather than empty 7 rounds into the car.
The cop and Castile had a miscommunication and the cop panicked and fired before thinking, I don't think the cop deliberately set out to hurt Castile but do think his actions deserved a manslaughter charge.
As you say the courts have decided differently but that doesn't mean that they got it right - you can't look at these stats on police shootings and think that it isn't a little odd there have been no convictions for anything improper just by sheer law of averages.
