Sandra Bland Arrest and Death

[Lord MJ]

I don't really comment on these police brutality stories. But I felt compelled to in this case. I don't know whether it's true that she committed suicide or not. It seems pretty ridiculous that she spent a whole weekend in jail for it even to get to that point.

As for the actual arrest itself. Even though I don't have a car and take public transit so I there wouldn't be much of a chance of me getting pulled over, if for some set of circumstances I happen to be behind a wheel, and a cop stops me and barks at me to get out of the car and refuses to answer the most basic of questions, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't just drive away. There's not much the officer could do about it unless he already had his gun drawn.

Results probably would be a lot better than what actually transpired seeing as she ended up dead.

I'm aware the article states that an officer has a right to ask for Sandra to exit the car, but given the circumstances leading up to that point (and the fact the only reason she changed lanes without a turn signal is to get out of his way), and the fact he refused to answer a simple question and instead got hostile, and having full knowledge of previous issues with police going on power trips; my point of driving away while she still could stands.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... .html?_r=0

Assessing the Legality
of Sandra Bland’s Arrest
By K.K. REBECCA LAI, HAEYOUN PARK and LARRY BUCHANAN UPDATED JULY 22, 2015

A dashboard camera video released by Texas officials, which contains vulgar language, confirms accounts of a physical confrontation between Sandra Bland and a state trooper. Ms. Bland, an African-American woman from the Chicago area, was arrested on July 10 during a traffic stop. She died three days later in her jail cell. Her arrest and cause of death remain in dispute. RELATED ARTICLE
Tensions Rise
Ms. Bland is pulled over and accused of failing to use a turn signal. Brian T. Encinia, a state trooper, approaches her car, takes her information and returns to his vehicle to write a ticket. When Trooper Encinia returns, he asks if she is O.K. and says that Ms. Bland seems irritated.
Source: Texas Department of Public Safety
Can a routine traffic stop lead to an arrest?

Failure to use a turn signal is technically an arrestable offense in Texas, though it rarely happens, according to Andrea Roth, an expert in criminal procedure who works as an assistant law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Rebecca Robertson, the legal and policy director for A.C.L.U. in Texas, said, “The initial stop should not have resulted in an arrest.” Trooper Encinia could have just handed Ms. Bland a ticket through the window and let her drive away, she said.
“Get out of the car”
Trooper Encinia asks Ms. Bland to put out a cigarette. When she refuses, he tells her to get out of the car. After Ms. Bland refuses to step out of the car, he threatens to remove her by force, saying, “I’m giving you a lawful order.”
Source: Texas Department of Public Safety
In a traffic stop, is it legal for an officer to order a driver to put out a cigarette and exit the car?

Ms. Bland has a right to smoke in her car, but Trooper Encinia could argue that the cigarette was interfering with legitimate police business. Since he had already processed the papers, however, “I don’t see a good reason,” said Robert Weisberg, a criminal procedure expert and law professor at Stanford University.
During a traffic stop, a police officer has the right to ask a driver to get out of the car even for a non-arrestable offense, as a way of securing his own safety. The officer has almost complete discretion and the driver is legally obligated to get out when asked. “He has control over the location of drivers,” Mr. Weisberg said. “It is equal to an officer patting you down to see if you have a gun.”
In this case, Mr. Weisberg said, there is no evidence that Trooper Encinia feared for his safety. He would have to argue that Ms. Bland’s refusal to put the cigarette out gave him the impression that she was violent. If Trooper Encinia had feared for his safety, he would not have walked away from the car for five minutes, Mr. Weisberg said.
Escalating Force
Trooper Encinia reaches into the car to remove Ms. Bland. Ms. Bland refuses to cooperate. He repeats “You are under arrest” and requests backup. After a struggle, Trooper Encinia pulls out a taser and yells, “I will light you up.” Ms. Bland exits the car.
Source: Texas Department of Public Safety
Is there a legal basis for arresting Ms. Bland at this point? Is it legal to pull a driver out of the car?

The only possible basis for telling Ms. Bland that she is under arrest is the crime of resisting a lawful order to get out of the car, unless Trooper Encinia had told her that he was arresting her for the traffic violation, Mr. Weisberg said.
If there is clearly a lawful order to get the driver out of the car and if the officer has no other choice, he can pull the driver out. But he must have exhausted all of the alternatives first, and Trooper Encinia seems to escalate things very quickly, Mr. Weisberg said. “The motive for yanking her out seems to be her rude behavior,” he said.
Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a news conference that Trooper Encinia had not complied with the department’s courtesy policy and procedures, including “letting the individual know what action is going to be taken.”
The Arrest
The action continues outside of the view of the dashboard camera. Ms. Bland is heard yelling, “You are about to break my wrist.” Another officer is heard assisting in restraining her. Ms. Bland says that she cannot hear and that her head has been slammed into the ground.
Source: Texas Department of Public Safety
Is it legal for an officer to use force while arresting someone?

“What’s disturbing here was that she was arrested for assaulting an officer,” Ms. Robertson said. “He had to arrest her because she was resisting arrest, but her resistance is a response to the officer escalating the situation.”
Use of force against a citizen is allowed when an officer is arresting someone, but it should be proportional to the circumstance, she said.
“While they are forcefully holding her down, I don’t think a judge would see that restraint as disproportionate physical force against Ms. Bland,” Ms. Roth said.
In the arrest affidavit, Trooper Encinia described Ms. Bland as “combative and uncooperative” and said she had begun swinging at him with her elbows after she was removed from the car, handcuffed and forcibly subdued.
Another View of the Incident
A video of the arrest recorded by a bystander, below, shows Ms. Bland on the ground with the trooper standing above her.

Monday, July 13: Death
About 6:30 a.m., Ms. Bland refuses a breakfast tray. Shortly after 7 a.m. she responds, “I’m fine” to a jailer making the rounds, officials say, and she later asks how to make a phone call.
Shortly after 9 a.m., a jailer finds her hanging. A video released by the sheriff’s office shows that there was no activity in the hallway leading to her cell for about 90 minutes before an officer checked on her and then called for help. The closed-circuit video below shows guards and a nurse rushing toward Ms. Bland’s cell. Emergency workers unsuccessfully administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation before she was pronounced dead at 9:16 a.m.
00:00
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Source: Reuters
The Waller County Sheriff’s Office issues a statement saying that Ms. Bland was found not breathing from what appeared to be self-inflicted asphyxiation. An autopsy classifies her death as suicide by hanging. County officials say she was found in a “semi-standing position,” hanged with a plastic trash-can liner affixed to a U-shaped metal hook on a partition in her cell.
Friends and relatives have expressed skepticism at police statements that Ms. Bland killed herself, and they have called for an independent autopsy. “Based on the Sandy that I knew, that's unfathomable to me,” another sister of Ms. Bland’s, Sharon Cooper, said at a news conference in Chicago.

[Aether]

... if for some set of circumstances I happen to be behind a wheel, and a cop stops me and barks at me to get out of the car and refuses to answer the most basic of questions, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't just drive away. There's not much the officer could do about it unless he already had his gun drawn.

You and I know the officer would have given chase and possibly shot Sandra. Then we would be at the classic conclusion, "you should not have ran/drove/walked away and just did as the officer demanded."

Whether or not it's racism and/or murder, this is just another example of how incapable police are handling situations.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There's one line in there at the "Arrest" stage, "they had to arrest her because she was resisting arrest."

I have no idea how that makes sense.

[UnderAGreySky]

Because she was Driving While Black.

[General Zod]

There's some serious contention over whether or not the video itself was edited, so frankly I wouldn't trust anything released by the Sheriff's department regarding her supposed suicide.

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/22/9013647/sa ... deo-edited

[Dominus Atheos]

Good old NYT, they can always be counted on to carry water for the powerful, and marginalize the powerless.

Pulling her out of her car was not legal:

Rodriguez v. United States held that police could not extend the length of a routine traffic stop, even for just a few minutes, absent a safety related concern or reasonable suspicion to believe that the driver may have committed an additional crime. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in the opinion of the Court, “[t]he tolerable duration of police inquiries in the traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure’s ‘mission’ — to address the traffic violation that warranted the stop, and attend to related safety concerns.” A police stop “may ‘last no longer than is necessary to effectuate th[at] purpose.’ Authority for the seizure thus ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are — or reasonably should have been — completed.”

By the time Encinia asks Bland to put out her cigarette, the “mission” of his encounter with Bland is almost at completion. He has already written the citation and brought it to Bland. While she is being handcuffed, Bland even indicates that she was “trying to sign the fucking ticket” before Encinia tried to pull her out of her car. Had the officer not decided to extend the length of the stop over the argument about the cigarette, it is likely that Bland would have been sent on her way very shortly after she declined to extinguish her cigarette.

Under Rodriguez, a stop may be extended if the officer uncovers new evidence that provides reasonable suspicion that a suspect has committed some other crime, but cigarette smoking is legal so that could not have justified extending the length of the stop. That leaves one other possible justification: an officer may extend a stop to address “safety concerns” that arise out of an encounter with a suspect. Thus, if Bland’s survivors challenge this arrest in court, Encinia might try to argue that the cigarette presented a potential safety concern — perhaps he thought that she might try to use it as a weapon and burn him.

A search of the Lexis database of court decisions found no federal or state court cases that would bind a Texas officer which answers the question of whether a lit cigarette presents the kind of safety concern relevant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Rodriguez.Nevertheless, there are two reasons why a court should be skeptical if Encinia claims that he decided to extend and escalate his confrontation with Bland because of safety concerns related to the cigarette.

The first is just how rapidly Encinia escalated this confrontation. The officer never gives Bland a direct order to extinguish the cigarette — his exact words to her are “you mind putting out your cigarette, please, if you don’t mind?” So, even if Encinia did have the lawful authority to demand that she put out the cigarette, Bland reasonably could have viewed this as a request that she could refuse. When Bland did refuse, Encinia immediately orders her out of the car without taking the intermediate step of actually ordering her to put out the cigarette. This rapid escalation extended the length of the stop without a clear justification for doing so.

Additionally, Trooper Encinia did not mention the argument over the cigarette (or the fact that he pulled his stun gun) in his official incident report. If Encinia truly believed that the lit cigarette was a danger to his safety that offered a legal justification for his actions, then it is unlikely that he would not have mentioned it in the report.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/0 ... ds-arrest/

[Eternal_Freedom]

"Additionally, Trooper Encinia did not mention the argument over the cigarette (or the fact that he pulled his stun gun) in his official incident report. If Encinia truly believed that the lit cigarette was a danger to his safety that offered a legal justification for his actions, then it is unlikely that he would not have mentioned it in the report."

And this is why dashboard (and personal) cameras should be on every damned US cop and patrol car.

[Dominus Atheos]

The district attorney in this case wants to to know that sandra bland was no angel:

Sandra Bland Becomes The Latest Victim Of The ‘Marijuana Smear’

Sandra Bland was high on marijuana — while she was incarcerated in the Texas jail where she eventually died — according to Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis. Mathis reportedly said in a text message to an attorney representing the Bland family that “[l]ooking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail.”

If true, this allegation suggests that security in this jail facility is extraordinarily lax. How does marijuana make its way to an incarcerated individual in the first place? And how does that individual manage to smoke or eat a “large quantity” of it without jail officials noticing?

The allegation that Bland used pot shortly before her death, moreover, fits a pattern in high-profile cases involving the questionable death of a black man or woman that has become so common that it is practically a cliché. During the uncertain period where investigators and reporters are trying to figure out just why someone died, news suddenly leaks that this individual was a marijuana user. Generally, the alleged marijuana use is raised to discredit someone is is no longer able to speak for themselves, and to imply that the marijuana use somehow contributed to their death.

At George Zimmerman’s trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin, for example, Zimmerman’s lawyer pointed to traces of marijuana in Martin’s blood. One conservative blogger claimed, without evidence, that Martin was a drug dealer.

Similarly, the lawyer representing Theodore Wafer — who was convicted of shooting Renisha McBride while she stood outside on his front porch, apparently seeking help after she was in a car accident — told that jury that McBride was out a friend’s house before she was killed drinking and smoking marijuana. Jonathan Ferrell, a former college football player who was killed by cops after he also sought help after a car wreck, was accused of drinking and smoking. Toxicology reports later found no drugs in Ferrell’s system and his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit.

The reported allegation that Bland used marijuana while incarcerated adds to the haze of uncertainty surrounding her death. Although Mathis says that his office’s inquiry into Bland’s death is “being treated like a murder investigation,” the sheriff’s office claims that Bland was discovered “in her cell not breathing from what appears to be self-inflicted asphyxiation,” and a preliminary autopsy announced on Thursday corroborates this claim. Jail intake forms released on Wednesday indicate that Bland answered “yes” when asked if she had previously attempted suicide, although there are discrepancies between two different forms asking about whether she has attempted or contemplated suicide.

If investigators ultimately conclude that Bland’s death was a suicide — and not a homicide — Mathis’s reported claim that Bland used marijuana while she was in jail suggests that something still went horribly wrong while Bland was behind bars. If it was indeed possible for Bland to consume a “large quantity of marijuana” while incarcerated, that suggests that the jail may have lacked other important safeguards, such as procedures to ensure that suicidal inmates do not act on these impulses.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/0 ... ana-smear/

[TheFeniX]

Even if she did commit suicide, county lock-up for three days for..... being arrested for resisting arrest is... wait, this happened in Waller County to a minority? I work in Waller County. So.... I'm not really surprised.

[Kamakazie Sith]

It's because she was arrested for assault on a public servant or something along those lines. In the probable cause statement the trooper says Bland kicked him and attempted to elbow him. When you watch the video you can hear the trooper say something about that.

This of course is irrelevant to the fact that the troopers decision to expand the scope of the stop is simply not there. He should have just put up with her anger had her sign the warning and be on his way.

By the way...is tin foil itchy?

[Batman]

Being arrested for resisting arrest is a ridiculous charge. It essentially means the police can arrest you just because.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Being arrested for resisting arrest is a ridiculous charge. It essentially means the police can arrest you just because.

What happened here? Did you not read my post? She was arrested for assaulting a police officer/public servant. She was also charged with resisting arrest. The arrest she resisted was for assaulting a police officer.

[Grumman]

The allegation that Bland used pot shortly before her death, moreover, fits a pattern in high-profile cases involving the questionable death of a black man or woman that has become so common that it is practically a cliché. During the uncertain period where investigators and reporters are trying to figure out just why someone died, news suddenly leaks that this individual was a marijuana user. Generally, the alleged marijuana use is raised to discredit someone is is no longer able to speak for themselves, and to imply that the marijuana use somehow contributed to their death.

And if it did? If you see a recurring theme of people using an illegal, mind-altering substance and then being accused of assaulting people, shouldn't you at least consider the possibility that those two factors are linked? If it was recognised that drinking alcohol and getting into car crashes were linked, you'd be rightly considered a fucking idiot if you tried to write that off as a smear campaign against alcohol or drunk drivers.

[Dominus Atheos]

Do you understand the difference between a stimulant and a depressant? Idiot.

[ArmorPierce]

Being arrested for resisting arrest is a ridiculous charge. It essentially means the police can arrest you just because.

What happened here? Did you not read my post? She was arrested for assaulting a police officer/public servant. She was also charged with resisting arrest. The arrest she resisted was for assaulting a police officer.

The cop didn't need to be manhandling her in the first place. There was no reason to do so except to harass her and try to get another charge on her. It looks like you agree with that in your original post and yeah if I was in the situation I would have just complied.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The allegation that Bland used pot shortly before her death, moreover, fits a pattern in high-profile cases involving the questionable death of a black man or woman that has become so common that it is practically a cliché. During the uncertain period where investigators and reporters are trying to figure out just why someone died, news suddenly leaks that this individual was a marijuana user. Generally, the alleged marijuana use is raised to discredit someone is is no longer able to speak for themselves, and to imply that the marijuana use somehow contributed to their death.

And if it did? If you see a recurring theme of people using an illegal, mind-altering substance and then being accused of assaulting people, shouldn't you at least consider the possibility that those two factors are linked? If it was recognised that drinking alcohol and getting into car crashes were linked, you'd be rightly considered a fucking idiot if you tried to write that off as a smear campaign against alcohol or drunk drivers.

Did you also completely miss the part where a) this only seems to apply to black people, b) it's used on the victims as if being a recreational drug user makes it acceptable to ignore they unneccessary and possibly suspicious death and c) that in at least one of the cases described in that article, the toxicology report showed no traces of drugs in his system and his blood alcohol was below the legal limit.

It's also highly suspect that these allegations are made after the victim is dead, is never mentioned in the initial police reports and only crops up after some form of media controversy emerges about the case? If it were actually try or linked to the victim's deaths, you woudl think it'd be important enough to be mentioned by the police and/or the people who killed them.

Honestly, when you put it together, you come to the depressing conclusion that it's a way of saying "yeah they're dead, but it's ok because they were a dope-smoker" and they're only saying that because saying "they were only a black person" is too much even for semi-subtle racists.

[ArmorPierce]

My opinion is that the problem we have with cops in this country is due to historical lack of accountability. The lack of accountability gives rise to an environment were cops feel free to escalate tense situations rather than make an attempt to diffuse tense situations by backing off to play it safe. I think part of the reason that society allowed cops to have this sort of power was because in the past it was used to harass visible minority groups. See cops and jim crow south for obvious example of this. Many other civilized countries would not stand for this but since in America the targets are visible minority groups, society at large saw the cops as part of them and their personal tool rather than as a competing group. Just my hypothesis I've been kicking around in my head.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, probably more significant, when this kind of harassing behavior is directed ONLY at members of a minority, the majority may not even perceive it and may not recognize or believe that anything is going on, because the police are being quite nice and pleasant to them.

Even if they don't think it's right as such for police to harass black people, if the police harass only black people, then black people will (and do) have a hell of a time convincing a white majority that the problem they're talking about actually exists.

The allegation that Bland used pot shortly before her death, moreover, fits a pattern in high-profile cases involving the questionable death of a black man or woman that has become so common that it is practically a cliché. During the uncertain period where investigators and reporters are trying to figure out just why someone died, news suddenly leaks that this individual was a marijuana user. Generally, the alleged marijuana use is raised to discredit someone is is no longer able to speak for themselves, and to imply that the marijuana use somehow contributed to their death.

And if it did? If you see a recurring theme of people using an illegal, mind-altering substance and then being accused of assaulting people, shouldn't you at least consider the possibility that those two factors are linked? If it was recognised that drinking alcohol and getting into car crashes were linked, you'd be rightly considered a fucking idiot if you tried to write that off as a smear campaign against alcohol or drunk drivers.

If it were being used every time a car crashes, including in situations where toxicologists claim that no, the person who died wasn't drunk, then you would not be an idiot at all to think a smear campaign was going on.

The county police are saying "she consumed large amounts of pot in our jail before committing suicide." If their jail is even semi-competently managed that should not be possible let alone plausible. Therefore, either:

1) The police here are flamingly incompetent and, apparently, don't even realize it because they think "someone consumed massive amounts of pot in our jail and then killed themselves" is better for their reputation than "someone killed themselves." Or...

2) The police here, this time, are lying, as other police have sometimes lied before. In which case they did this in an attempt to use "the dead person was high" to make the person who killed them appear innocent.

[Joun_Lord]

Well clearly the stop smoking campaigns are doing alot of good by getting people disarmed of those deadly smokey weapons. But thats not enough, we need a cigarette ban on any cigarettes over two inches, automatic assault cigarettes (those electric cigarettes) and cigarettes equipped with those deadly mouth things that go up. For the children. And the cops.

Seriously though, this is just symptomatic of police in America. I ain't saying all or even most cops are a problem but still enough cops are fucking morons who seem to have no sense. Cops who bully people and expect everyone to kowtow before them even when they aren't doing anything wrong. People need to comply with cops for their own safety and the safety of the LEOS but within fucking reason. This idiot officer should not have been manhandling her because she wouldn't put out her fucking cigarette over a stop that shouldn't have been anything more then a citation if even that. Cops thinking they got more power then they do (or atleast should) like trying to confiscate cameras, arresting people because they are slow to comply with order, detaining people just for being in an area, shit needs to stop.

Another problem is cops who get violent at the drop of the hat, who shoot people for having a knife, for having a gun, for having shit that just resembles a gun.

The fucking Europeons, people so scared of guns they will call the bobbies or whatever the fuck they call their cops over fucking ammo, don't even just automatically shoot armed suspects. American law enforcement should be more used to dealing with armed individuals sensibly then motherfuckers who may not even carry firearms.

I think the only way to solve this is to have cameras every fucking where for cops (and prison guards). They need a tamper resistant body camera that is always on when they are on duty and recordings are handled by on offsite 3rd party. Their weapons from the Glawks or whatever sidearms they use to their tasers to the longs guns need cameras too, cameras that work a bit like gun cameras on aircraft that record when fired. Tampering with a camera on their person, vehicle, or weapon should be an instant termination offense.

Keep good cops honest and safe from false accusations and keep bad cops from shooting unarmed and armed but non-threatening people or prison guards gouging out eyes or raping inmates.

Training also needs to happen. Cops need to relearn how to protect and serve citizens, to treat people like citizens rather then potential hostiles. The military mentality perfected on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul needs to be done away with, cops aren't in a warzone, most people aren't a threat, citizens aren't the enemy.

[Lord MJ]

Wondering if she had pepper spray and if she could've got a shot off before the officer was able to pull out his gun. I'll have to watch the video again, but I think I recall the officer exposing his head when he tried to reach into the car. A moment of vulnerability that a pepper spray shot could incapacitate him. And then drive away as fast as she could.

I would imagine that cops are trained for that kind of thing though.

And in either case she would have to deal with the cops again as a consequence because cops aren't the kind that will look at that video and say "our man was a dumbass and the black chick did nothing wrong."

But it would still be better than what actually transpired seeing as that resulted in her ending up dead.

[The Romulan Republic]

If she had pepper sprayed the cops and run for it, what are the odds that she would have been gunned down right then? Pretty high, I bet.

I'd say that cooperating increased her chances of survival, even if it didn't work out that way in the end. Assuming, of course, that the police were not fully intending to kill her from the moment they pulled her over.

Edit: Bottom line, as a rule, I would not recommend fighting back against police even if they're in the wrong. Unless you know for certain that they're planning to kill you anyway (unlikely), you are only going to make it worse. Survive, then protest or sue or whatever later if you have grounds.

[Lord MJ]

Was there only one cop at the beginning or was the second cop there the whole time?

If the former she could've made a break for it. If it was two, then there wasn't much she could do in that case.

[The Romulan Republic]

If there was one officer and she pepper sprayed them, is that going to incapacitate them long enough for her to get in her car and drive away before they pull out their gun and start shooting? And if it does, do you think they won't get in their car, call for backup, and chase her?

And if she did get away, what happens later? Like when a bunch of pissed off cops who now have reason to regard her as a serious threat show up at her door?

Really, this is such a stupid topic that I find it disrespectful to the seriousness of the issue.

Edit: Let me spell this out- if you fight back physically, the cops can always respond with more force than you, and likely will. Fighting back physically is not a good idea from the point of view of protecting yourself. It can only work if you have the force and will for an actual armed uprising, which is a whole other disaster. Otherwise, at most you've briefly delayed law enforcement and probably made their response more violent when they catch up with you.

[Prannon]

Uh...

Advocating that people flee from the police is damn stupid.

The way things went down, she was arrested and had committed no real crime. Without the benefit of hindsight, us looking at the video wouldn't have assumed that death was in her future.

Had she done what you propose, she would have committed a crime (assault on an officer for the pepper spray, plus fleeing from the police), and she very likely would have increased her chances of getting shot during her subsequent arrest.

It's a very very very very bad idea. We shouldn't even begin to think that it was one of her reasonable options.

[Lord MJ]

It's really about

1. How to extricate herself from the current altercation (even though it may lead to issues down the line.)

2. A more general look at how people can exit these types of encounters, besides submission and hoping for the best. I would go so far as to say training should exist on how to do exactly that, though it would be much easier to have more disciplined cops.

The fact that there is even a need to have this discussion is an indication of how bad things have gotten.