In doing so, she punctuated a national paradigm shift forming since Ferguson, in which citizens and police watchdogs combine cellphone videos with social media to seize the narratives of controversial and racially charged police encounters, and pre-empt official accounts they often contend are sanitized for the public.
In the Bay Area and beyond, law enforcement officials and those tasked with keeping them in check are reaching a consensus about the immediacy of live video: This is the new normal, and it's going to control how these horrific events play out from now on.
"These events are now being defined by people in the community," said Walter Katz, San Jose's independent police auditor and a nationally recognized police-accountability advocate. "They're framing the incident within moments of it occurring. This has implications for how government agencies respond, and how media responds."
To others, Reynolds provided a survival guide for people of color scared that something as innocuous as a busted taillight -- the violation that led to her and Castile being stopped by police in the first place -- could end in tragedy.
"What Diamond Reynolds did was lay down a blueprint on how to act in those situations," said Raj Jayadev, director of the social-justice group Silicon Valley De-Bug. "She was precedent-setting by using the new technology, her sense of composure, making sure she survived. People have asked themselves, 'What do I do in this moment?' She's shown us how to show the truth and use the power of accessible media to do it."
The reaction to Reynolds' graphic, heart-wrenching web broadcast was swift. Just hours after the Wednesday night shooting, more than a hundred demonstrators gathered at a makeshift vigil at the shooting site in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. Protesters also went to the home of Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton.
Thursday morning, spurred by the video, Dayton called for a federal investigation into the shooting by a St. Anthony police officer, and was declarative in attributing the shooting to racial bias. Both Castile and Reynolds are black.
"Would this have happened if those passengers or driver were white? I don't think it would have," Dayton said in a news conference in St. Paul.
At that point, all that had been released by St. Anthony police, which has jurisdiction over Falcon Heights and was barely into its investigation, was a terse news release stating that one of its officers fatally shot a man.
That pace is typical of police departments across the country, especially in smaller communities. An ensuing investigation usually takes several months. Meanwhile, citizen video will have been viewed thousands of times.
"In an era of social media, that's how everyone is going to reach their conclusions," said Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and an expert in police training. "The image of what happened, right or wrong, has largely already been formed. A three- or six-month investigation is going to be irrelevant to how it will be perceived by the public."
The public's growing lack of patience with standard procedure is rooted in deep skepticism born from an array of controversial police killings that ended with minimal consequences for the officers involved, Jayadev said.
"These killings are not happening in a vacuum. There is a history of police and law enforcement covering things up," Jayadev said. "The urgency to get any information out as instantaneously as possible is fueled by the historical context. That's where the impulse is coming from."
The ACLU recognized this mindset in developing a mobile app that allows witnesses to record video and rapidly upload it to a secure server to thwart police seizures of the phones and the footage. Reynolds' live-stream of Castile's shooting achieves a similar outcome.
"I wanted the people to determine who is right and who is wrong," she told reporters Thursday.
Kenney said the new trend leaves police in a tough spot, especially because, like many citizen videos, Reynolds' live-stream does not show the events that led up to the shooting.
So the narrative comes solely from Reynolds, telling her audience that Castile informed the unidentified officer that he had a lawfully concealed weapon and was reaching for his driver's license before the officer opened fire. During her retelling, Castile is slumped in the passenger seat, his shirt soaked in blood, while the officer, his gun trained on the car occupants, is heard saying, "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out."
Still, Kenney said, police have to adjust or they run the risk of being left out entirely from the public understanding of high-profile incidents.
"Speed, turnaround and transparency are going to be critical if police want to have a role in the account of what happened," Kenney said. "They may not like it, but they have to live with it. It's a fact."
San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia recognizes the sentiment, but noted that in real time, law enforcement is often hamstrung by investigative sensitivities.
"That's the point we have to tackle. How we strike that balance, to talk to the community about incidents without tainting the investigation," Garcia said.
The chief has direct experience with how trying to quell public pressure for answers can backfire: Last fall, after an officer-involved shooting that killed a murder suspect, police erroneously told reporters that the suspect had reached into his waistband when an officer opened fire, only to have to recant the claim after it was proved untrue.
There might not be a perfect solution, Garcia said, adding that police instead have to earn community trust during times of peace, generating patience they can draw from while they get answers during a crisis.
"We're working very hard with our community and faith leaders to earn that trust, because if it isn't there, you're not going to be allotted that time."
©2016 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
