Justice

Investigators wanted more data on Philando Castile’s girlfriend than the cop who killed him

They subpoenaed Facebook and Sprint for four days’ worth of information on Diamond Reynolds.

Justice

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The number of days worth of phone records that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension demanded on Diamond Reynolds, girlfriend of the late Philando Castile.
Justice

Investigators wanted more data on Philando Castile’s girlfriend than the cop who killed him

They subpoenaed Facebook and Sprint for four days’ worth of information on Diamond Reynolds.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which provides training and resource support to local law enforcement agencies, asked Sprint and Facebook for the records of Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, according to a public records request published by Gizmodo.

Castile was shot and killed in Falcon Heights, Minnesota last July by recently acquitted police officer Jeronimo Yanez after being pulled over. Reynolds was in the passenger’s seat and filmed the aftermath of the gratuitous shooting for Facebook Live.

In investigating Castile’s murder, which was immediately suspected by the public to be another instance of racist police brutality, the bureau subpoenaed phone records for Jeronimo Yanez from the night before the shooting at 9 p.m., through midnight the night of. The subpoena for Reynolds’ records however, spanned from two days before the shooting, to a day after. The bureau also requested records from the same period for Castile’s Facebook accounts.

Sprint complied and sent the subpoenaed data, but Facebook resisted due to a gag order that aimed to prevent the company from notifying Reynolds that it would be sharing her data. The warrant to Facebook was later dropped.