HOW MANY OF THESE UNNESSARY VIOLATIONS ARE WE EXPECTED TO WITNESS?

…A home-made sign on a fence in Prairie View, Texas.  If you can't read it, it says: "SIGNAL LANE CHANGE OR SHERIFF MAY KILL YOU!

The above home-made sign pretty much says it all.

High-profile cases, since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO last summer, have sparked protests and sometimes warranted unrest among many American citizens.

And in the case of the young black woman, Sandra Bland, that was pulled over for failing to signal a lane-change in Prairie View, Texas, she is the latest example. 

 

It’s particularly a cause for local and national unrest when the involved black individual always seems to ends up being very dead.

Once again, a police officer’s patrol car dash-camera tells a tale that begs the question, “How often did this kind of inappropriate police action occur before the dash cameras became standard equipment?”  And what about those small Southern towns today where dash-cams are still not being used?

The point about this case is that the way the police officer acted, the individual involved did not have to be a minority female.  From the officer’s behavior, his demeanor suggests that any woman he might have pulled over could have been treated the same.  Especially if she displayed any sort of irritation at being pulled over.

Fortunately for the Bland woman’s family, they have a video that has now had over 2 million viewers on YouTube that questions why this woman was even pulled over.  Why did the officer treat her as he did? Why was she arrested and taken to the Waller County Sheriff’s Office, and why was she deposited in the county jail?

Finally, and most important, why would a young woman that was excited that she was starting a new job, that showed no signs of being despondent, and whose family was on the way to bail her out of jail, why would she commit suicide?  With her family on the way to get her, why would this woman on her first night in a Texas jail, hang herself with a black plastic trash bag? 

And isn’t it interesting that they just happened to have neglected to do the required jail cell bed-check in the middle of that particular night?

Ms. Bland’s family has rightfully requested a second autopsy and some specialists say that there may have been mistakes in the first autopsy that said it was a suicide.  (It is common in these kind of rural police cases that when the police tell the autopsy personnel that it was a suicide, the local county coroner team may perform that autopsy making that same assumption without questioning any other obvious signs.)

But let’s get back to the reason Ms. Bland ended up in the jail in the first place.

There is a DMV quoted statistic that says most American drivers commit multiple minor traffic violations virtually every time they drive an automobile.  Not using a turn-signal is one of the most common violations and most seasoned traffic officers will ignore the violations unless it is a blatant one, or one that could have caused an accident.  The video did not show that kind of drastic lane-change violation.

But the video did show the following:

The young woman was smoking a cigarette in her vehicle when the officer was speaking to her and he told her to put out the cigarette, which legally she was not required to do.

When she displayed a minor irritation at being pulled over, the officer then raised his voice and ordered her out of the car.  Ms. Bland had not done anything that would require her to leave the front seat of her car.  When she went for her phone to record this event, he raised his voice again and ordered her to put the phone down and get out of the car.

So far, this officer has gone totally beyond the normal officer training for how to perform a routine traffic stop.

During the whole event, Ms. Bland was asking what she was being arrested for and the video shows that the officer just continued to yell at her as he never answered her question. 

There was then a tussle in him trying to remove Ms. Bland from the vehicle, and he has stated that she had kicked his shin and scratched the back of his hand.

Once they got to the police station, she was booked for accosting a public officer.

Ms. Bland had contacted her family from the police station and the family member has said that she was not acting depressed and was told they were on their way with the money for posting the $500 bail.  She did not display to either her family members or the other individuals in the jail facility that she needed to be under a suicide watch while in the cell.

As to the video, several breaks in the 52 minute video were highlighted on social media shortly after the film was released.  Many were using the broken footage to question the entire film's authenticity.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesman Tom Vinger said the video "has not been edited".  "Some of the video... was affected in the upload and is being addressed. We are working to re-post the dash-cam video," he added.

But the reality is that Ms. Bland's death sparks a serious demand for answers.

The police officer involved, Officer Encinia, who has been on the force for just over a year, has been put on administrative leave.

Texas DPS director Steven McCraw said his officers have "an obligation to exhibit professionalism and to be courteous".  But that, "wasn't the case in this situation".

The camera shows that the severe actions by the officer were “heavily disproportionate” to the traffic violation and her response.

Professor Lawrence Sherman, director of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University, has said the video clearly shows the officer is "out of control".  He also stated that the response was "heavily disproportionate to the seriousness of the offence" and that he believed "a suit against [Mr Encinia] for illegal arrest would be very successful".

The home-made fence sign in Prairie View just make one wonder, "How many of these unfortunate dash-cam videos we will be seeing before the offending local officers finally get the message?"

Copyright G.Ater  2015