The Officer Harassed a Black Man for Washing His Car, Unaware the Man Was His Police Sergeant and His Career Was About to End

Castellano said no. They asked if that would have changed his approach. Castellano said probably. That answer was revealing. It meant Castellano would have treated a white homeowner differently than he treated Whitmore.

It meant his approach was based on assumptions about who belonged in the neighborhood, not on actual suspicious behavior. The investigators reviewed the original call to dispatch. The anonymous caller had simply said there was a black male on Maple Street who didn’t look like he belonged and was acting suspicious around cars. The caller didn’t give a specific address, didn’t describe any criminal behavior, didn’t provide any details beyond race, a vague location, and the loaded phrase “didn’t look like he belonged.” It was, in other words, a perfect example of the kind of racially motivated call that officers are trained to investigate carefully rather than act on immediately.

Anonymous calls using phrases like “doesn’t belong” combined with racial descriptions and no specific criminal activity are often from people with bias who see any person of color in their neighborhood as inherently suspicious. Castellano should have called for more information, should have observed before approaching, should have looked for actual criminal behavior. Instead, he saw a black man and assumed he was the problem. The investigators also found something else troubling. They pulled dispatch records for Castellano’s entire 4-year career and found a pattern.

Castellano had responded to calls about suspicious persons at a rate 40% higher than other officers in his district. And 87% of those calls had involved people of color. Either Castellano was assigned to an area with legitimately more suspicious activity by people of color, or Castellano was actively seeking out calls that allowed him to stop people of color. The data suggested the latter. The investigation took 7 weeks.

During that time, investigators conducted 23 interviews, reviewed 14 hours of body camera footage from Castellano’s previous stops, and analyzed 4 years of dispatch records and incident reports. The findings were unequivocal. Castellano had violated department policy on racial profiling. He had conducted an investigatory stop without reasonable suspicion. He had failed to properly investigate before approaching a citizen.