https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/u...ettlement.html

he mother of Philando Castile, the black motorist killed last summer by a police officer from St. Anthony, Minn., reached a nearly $3 million settlement on Monday with that city.

The settlement came 10 days after the officer who fired the fatal shots, Jeronimo Yanez, was acquitted of second-degree manslaughter and all other charges. Mr. Castile’s case is the latest example of a police shooting of a black person leading to a legal settlement but no criminal conviction of the officer involved.

This month, the family of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed by the police in 2014, reached a settlement with Ferguson, Mo., reported to be worth $1.5 million. Cleveland agreed last year to pay $6 million to the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old fatally shot while playing with a replica gun. Also in 2016, the Village of Pleasantville, N.Y., agreed to a $6 million settlement in the fatal shooting of Danroy Henry Jr., a black college student.

The settlement in Minnesota, worth $2.995 million, according to a joint statement from the Castile family and the city of St. Anthony, avoids a federal civil rights lawsuit that the family had pledged to bring. The settlement will be paid with insurance money, not taxpayer funds, the statement said.

Robert Bennett, a lawyer for the Castile family, said that “no amount of money can ever replace Philando,” but that the settlement should provide some measure of comfort to those angered by his death.

I think this is a way of stopping what could be several years of litigation traveling through the courts and exacerbating the suffering of the family and the community,” Mr. Bennett said. “And perhaps both can do now the important business of trying to heal.”

The payout comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of the criminal justice system’s handling of police shootings. Officer Yanez was one of four police officers to go on trial for a fatal shooting of a black person in recent weeks. All of the shootings were captured on video. Juries acquitted three of the officers and failed to reach a verdict in the fourth case.

Mr. Castile’s death inspired protests and outrage starting minutes after he was shot last July 6 on a busy suburban road near the Minnesota state fairgrounds. Diamond Reynolds, Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, streamed the graphic aftermath of the shooting on Facebook and said her boyfriend had been trying to cooperate with Officer Yanez, who had pulled him over for a broken taillight.

Officer Yanez testified in court that he believed Mr. Castile matched the description of a robbery suspect, was disobeying his commands and was reaching for a gun.

Mr. Castile, who was licensed to carry a gun, had advised Officer Yanez that he had a firearm in the car. Prosecutors said he had done so to put the officer at ease, not to cause alarm. Ms. Reynolds said that Mr. Castile was trying to retrieve his driver’s license, as had been requested by the officer, when he was shot.

Officer Yanez was believed to be the first Minnesota officer criminally charged in an on-duty fatal shooting. Protesters have marched repeatedly since his acquittal, including a highway blockade hours after the verdict and an interruption of the gay pride parade in Minneapolis on Sunday. On Twitter, some said the settlement did little to right the situation.