You wouldn’t think that failure to signal when making a turn with your car would deserve a death sentence, but…that’s what happened, effectively, to Sandra Bland.
And, on Dec. 22, a grand jury returned no indictments against individuals who might have been responsible for her death. In fairness, the grand jury is to reconvene this month and consider other indictments, so we’ll see what comes of it. Meanwhile, Bland’s family is already taking legal action.
What happened?
On July 10, in broad daylight, an officer pulled Sandra Bland over near her workplace (Prairie View A&M University) for failing to use her turn signal. The police dashcam video is available on YouTube, so you can see for yourself how a very average traffic stop went terribly wrong.
The first part of the interaction was normal: traffic-cop-pulls-driver-over-driver-is-annoyed. It’s after the officer returns from doing his thing in the police car that things go wrong.
He says she seems irritated, and she tells him what she’s thinking. Then he asks her to put out her cigarette, and, when she refuses, the tragedy commences. He orders her out of the car. She refuses. He threatens to pull her out of the car, then opens the door and tries to do so, ultimately pulling his gun on her, whereupon she got out of the car.
All this time, the conversation is such that I could easily imagine me being the driver. Bland’s comments and observations were much like ones I might have made to some overzealous police officer. She criticizes the extremes he’s going to over a simple signal-use violation and his attitude. He says he’s giving her a lawful order, threatens to “light her up” after pulling his gun out, and later states he was only going to give her a warning.
Once Bland exited the car, both went onto the sidewalk, largely out of view of the dashcam, but the conversation is still audible. It keeps getting worse. He tells her to put away her phone, though it sounds to me as though she is saying she doesn’t have it out. At another point, the officer is telling someone else to leave the area. She mentions being epileptic and that he is (or might be) hitting her head to the ground and he responds “good”…
She ends up being arrested and jailed for three days until she is found hanged, with a garbage bag, in her cell three days later. It is being ruled a suicide but the family doesn’t believe it and has asked for a second, independent autopsy, the results of which have not been released.
The family attorney is critical of the grand jury process because it is secretive, and there’s no way of knowing what evidence is presented to the grand jury. He is dissatisfied with how the investigation into Bland’s death is being handled, citing as an example the fact that the bag with which she was hanged has not been checked for fingerprints.
Regardless of how this shakes out, the root of the problem is not limited to the racism plaguing many of the police departments in the U.S. This is blatantly evident to anyone who has any awareness of the numerous deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement.
The other factor is the haughty attitude with which many police officers approach and interact with citizens. Just because they have a gun and a badge does not mean they are infallible or that some law has given them carte blanche to do as they wish with the people they encounter. They are on the job “to protect and to serve,” not “to abuse and assassinate”!
This is the kind of attitude that undoubtedly underlies some of the problems that we encounter in areas Armenians inhabit in high densities.
We should be actively engaged in police reform and sensitivity training efforts. I had a recent similarly unpleasant (but nowhere near as lengthy or grave) encounter right in front of my residence!
Go out, speak to police officers over a beer, become an officer yourself, get on your local police commission (or other oversight entity), or speak out at city council meetings, since this is an important, current, and very sensitive issue that impacts us both as citizens and as a minority group.
Garen Yegparian
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Garen,
This is a very disappointing article on more than one score. You don’t understand the Bland incident, her sad and lonely death, or police work. As an attorney, you should not join the bandwagon so readily, or misuse your opportunity on AW.
There is no culpability on the part of the officer for Ms. Bland’s death. You overlook what has been reported in the media about her history of depression. She killed herself, and quite possibly did so not because she was in jail, but because nobody among her friends and family came to bail her out. I read her bail was $5000, meaning she could have bailed out for 10 per cent of that amount. Her very educated sister, whom I have heard on the radio, apparently could not get the funds to a bail agent.
You complain about the secrecy of the Grand Jury. There are strong historic and statutory reasons for that, including preserving the reputations of the innocent, encouraging witnesses to testify without fear of retribution, and
letting the jurors ask questions and reach decisions without fear.
I was not there when the officer confronted Ms. Bland. Neither were you. I do see that the officer was new to the job, and she was verbally and physically resistant. That is a formula for problems, no matter the race of the person involved. He had the right to tell her to put out her cigarette. That is standard practice.
Officers are taught to control situations and not to let the non-compliant subject take over. In time, an officer may learn to win compliance with his presence, his humor, backing off, or distraction. But, I suspect, the officer involved had not met a non compliant middle aged female, and did not have the tools for dealing with her.
Did she use force on the officer? Some accounts say she did. It may have been trivial, but that too is a prescription for arrest and jail.
I do not see that you claim he had no authority to stop and arrest her.
I have not studied why she was jailed instead of cite/released. However, those decisions are made by the officer if and only if he could confirm her ID with government photo ID and confirmation by the dispatcher that the ID is good and the person has no warrants. I assume she had none.
When people are brought to jail, a peace officer or civilian jailer will see if they can be released. Jailing someone is expensive, and Sheriffs, who run jails, want to send everyone home they can on these infractions or misdemeanor situations.
I don’t know why she was jailed for 3 days. But you can’t blame the officer because it was not his decision.
Blame her depression, or her possible feeling of being abandoned.
Yes, some cops are as you put it “haughty” in dealing with some members of the public. After you have been on the street a while, that leaves the few officers who act that way. Sometimes, yuppies complain that the officers were rude, but what they are really complaining about is that the officer doesn’t treat them with fawning admiration or good customer service. That is not the officer’s job – he or she will structure the interview, and will ask questions his or her way without interruption. There is an art to it.
But many members of the public are haughty with officers too – esp. motorists who think their time is too valuable to be stopped for traffic violations.
You talk about the racism in many [unidentified] departments. You cite no evidence. You complain about the numbers of African Americans who are killed by officers. You overlook that officers also kill whites and hispanics. You do not seem to know that officers’ shootings are intensively reviewed by homicide investigators, DA’s and the lawyers for the dead person. If you think that the officer needs to wait until he is shot at or stabbed, you have’t been in a fight, let alone a kill or be killed encounter.
As a former officer I can tell you that when your gun is out you are focused on a physical threat, his access to weapons and proximity, and the things he may have said or done to others. Race is the last thing you think about in the kill or be killed tunnel vision.
Light a candle for Ms. Bland and the officer. He is suffering, I promise you.
“You overlook what has been reported in the media about her history of depression. She killed herself, and quite possibly did so not because she was in jail, but because nobody among her friends and family came to bail her out.”
How can you be so sure? As you say, you and the rest of us were not there when she was pulled over and most definitely not there in the jail.
Given the history institutionalized racism against blacks in this country, the possibility of foul play cannot be easily dismissed by blaming her depression.
On top of this, not all cops are the same. Some cops makes things worse by escalating a situation. A cop can be professional and yet stern and control the situation, or another cop can act angry and disrespectful.
Yes, cops can become cynical and jaded over the years with a tough job as their’s is. At the same time there is quite a bit of racial profiling against blacks in this country and they themselves can become cynical and jaded themselves. You would be too if you got pulled over for looking Armenian in the Glendale area over and over.
“You overlook that officers also kill whites and hispanics.”
That does not disprove that blacks do not receive racism from the police. What about those videos of unarmed black subjects being shot in the back as they are running away. You’re downplaying this very real issue.
The position of a police officer is a position of power and it can be abused for all sorts of reasons, including racism.
There is also a history of police crimes being covered up and cops protecting their own. Or are you going to argue that has never happened in America?
I have grown very tired of the Bland story. This was a sad case, an emotionally troubled woman who killed herself. End of story.
This his how Black people in America are policed. Tamir Rice, John Crawford etc.
Because I have heard so man times from cops, “we wanna go home at the end of the day”. If that is their mental focus, in my opinion that’s why they are reacting so harshly to killings. While we all truly want all service people to return home People in the marines, navy, army give their lives to protect our country they “may not” come home. So some cops may be in the wrong career field
I think they need to check inside of the bag, for her DNA, I would think if she was possibly murdered it would have been sufication then a staged hanging. I’m pretty sure they can tell whether someone took there last breath inside that bag or not nowadays.
I have had two interactions with American police officers, and during both of these interactions the police officers felt compelled to tell me (in a non-sequitur) that they were armed. What tough guys.
Oh and I’m sorry, Lacey sheridan, that hearing about other peoples’ problems bores you. Imagine how it must be for the people who actually are visible minorities, who do suffer from depression. These people cannot just flip to another web page and forget about it.
You’re “tired of the Bland story”? Imagine how it must feel for the Bland family!
Why don’t you apply that same “tired” attitude to Armenians’ concerns:
“I have grown very tired of the Armenians’ story. This was a sad case, a civil war that went wrong. End of story.”
I am proud of Garen Yegparian for writing about this issue. We Armenians always ask non-Armenians to care about our issues, issues that do not affect them. Shouldn’t we then do the same for other groups?