I’ve been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me
Then this morning I get up and the first news I see is that the dash-cam video of Sandra Bland’s arrest has been released.
Holy shit.
She was pulled over for failing to signal during a lane change. When he walks up to the window to give her a warning, he asks her what’s wrong — I presume she looked annoyed — and she is blunt and tells him why. Then he tells her to put out her cigarette, and she refuses. And for that, he arrests her, manhandles out of her car, and roughs her up offscreen.
She’s put in jail, and is dead three days later, they say because she hanged herself.
This is unbelievable. Three days in jail and dead, for failing to signal a lane change? By what right is that policeman telling her she can’t smoke in her own car? What was he arresting her for? For being uppity? What was the cause for threatening to tase her, for handcuffing her, for putting her in jail?
There’s nothing in the video to show that Bland was in the wrong. She was angry but calm until the cop decided that a civilian disagreeing with him was cause to open the door and physically drag her out and arrest her. If you watch through the whole thing, the cop spends a fair amount of time justifying his actions to the camera: he was just trying to “calm her down”, and that she was “resisting arrest”. It was all her fault! She was assaulting him!
It was chilling to listen to him rationalize the event immediately after the fact — and nothing he said made his actions OK. This is a man who does not question his power to do great harm to the people he’s supposed to protect.
Coates is right. Read his book. It’ll change how you see the world.
Nothing will ever change. I read the youtube comments on a video of the discovery of her death.
Right. America, you suck.
It’s like the Charlie Hebdo thing; if you disrespect someone who has the power to kill you then it’s your fault you’re dead.
Arrest somebody for resisting arrest. Worse than circular reasoning, it’s cynical reasoning.
And what the fuck happened in these three days?
My guess is that she was righteous and angry for those three days, like she was in her car, and someone decided that they didn’t want to have to face her in court.
What you do want to bet that the investigation will find no wrongdoings on the side of the police… certainly the woman just killed herself to spite the poor officer.
It’s possible she did kill herself. She suffered from depression, and she’d just been thrown in jail over a TURN SIGNAL. For three days. That does not let the Texas police off the hook, though — what kind of absurd abuse of justice is this, that someone gets jailed for so long for such a trivial offense?
You’re not really fair here PZ… she clearly disrespected him and his authoritah and that is one of the greatest offense in the US it seems. Well, if you’re black at least.
Dashcam Video of Violent Arrest of Sandra Bland Was Edited
I believe the FBI is getting involved in this investigation, and it’s being treated as a murder investigation.
Kaintukee Bob: Good god, I hope so.
My husband and I got pulled over outside of Ouray, Colorado for what I can only presume was the temerity of passing one of the sheriff’s womenfolk on the right. (It was at a low speed, and we didn’t cut her off, but I learned my lesson there — don’t pass people in a small town.) It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. We were on a desolate road, above a huge drop, in an area where a car comes by once in half an hour or so — and it’s usually a local’s car. We were driving a rental with out-of-state plates. We had blue-state driver licenses (and he made a comment about that, of course). There was approximately a ten-minute period when I thought we were going to die. The “law man” could easily have executed us, pushed our bodies and our car over the cliff, and no one would ever find us — and he made sure we understood that crystal-clear.
Ultimately, he let us go (after we told him we have an infant back home, which was pretty d-d close to begging for our lives). As we drove away, we were too shaken to speak. After awhile, my husband — who was ordinarily always downplaying racism in this country — said: “Wow. Can you imagine if we were black? We’d be dead at the bottom of that cliff.”
I remain baffled by the authoritarianism of some people, like those commenters. Generally, I am an empathic person, and I can mentally put myself in a lot of different frames of mind of different people. I cannot put myself in a frame of mind of an authoritarian person like those ‘obey the cops at all costs’ people. There reasoning seems entirely alien to me.
Time to put another book on my reading list though.
@#3 Rietpluim:
I once represented someone in a false-arrest case. Basically, the cops came to arrest this guy for failing to do community service for a prior misdimeanor, and he showed them papers demonstrating that he HAD, in fact, done community service. Thereupon, they arrested him for resisting arrest — the arrest that was improper to begin with. Showing exonerating documents to the cops counted as “resisting arrest”.
It was a minor case, but one of the most frustrating ones in my career. As the city’s attorney explained in court (and the judge agreed), an arrest is a “process”, and contradicting an officer at any phase during that process constitutes “resisting”. Even if the initial arrest process is illegal, and objections to the officer are valid, the act alone of “resisting” is a valid basis for an arrest. In fact, resistance doesn’t even have to take the form of an articulated objection. Give the officer a stinkeye while he’s privately contemplating arresting you for some BS reason and boom, you’ve just committed the arrestable act of resisting arrest.
Personally, I would repeal the statutes on “resisting arrest” altogether; they are just a license for cops to abuse people. If the initial arrest is valid, then there is no reason to add “resisting arrest” to what is already, presumably, a sustainable charge. If the underlying arrest is BS, then the arrestee has every right to resist it, at least non-violently.
Wow, wikipedia is useful for everything. Just found a great article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_cop
Short version: No, you victim-blaming, cop-worshipping assholes, disrespecting a cop is not a crime.
I wish I could say I was surprised. On any level. But Troopers in Texas are kinda notorious.
We have two lane highways that drop from a posted speed of 70 mph to 60 mph at “night” which is loosely defined as when you need to turn your headlights on.
My mom got her first ticket in 20-odd years of living in Texas driving from my University back to her home on one of those two-lane roads from a Trooper who had decided that it was “night” and therefore my mom was doing 10 over the posted limit. If she’d been black, I’m sure it would have been more than a ticket.
And yet he was entirely cordial and pleasant to that first woman. I wonder what race she was?
Why would he ask Sandra what’s wrong if he didn’t want to hear the answer? She was annoyed because he’d pulled her over, that much is pretty obvious. What answer was he expecting, exactly? Then he tells her to put out her cigarette, presumably just to demonstrate his power over her since he had no actual reason to ask, and gets pissed when she does not comply with his arbitrary and capricious order.
I admit she doesn’t exactly help herself by pulling around and repeatedly calling him a pussy when he’s trying to cuff her, but I think she’s understandably pissed considering he has no fucking reason to put her in cuffs in the first place.
Even sarcasm is no longer strong enough to keep evil and stupidity at bay. Someone in the comments on article linked by #9 really DID make this argument.
*speechless*
What’s more interesting is the things we don’t see at all. COnveniently we only hear what’s going on during the arrest. She’s yelling in pain. she says “you’re breaking my wrist”. when you watch the footing a witness took it looks like he’s kneeling on her neck/head ( sadly bad quality). The police thug immediately tries to make the witness leave.
What purpose does the video editing serve? Sandra was in custody and on her way by the time the editing is supposed to have happened.
It is part of the officer’s job to de escalate situations whenever possible. De escalation techniques were probably part of his training. He didn’t employ them.
He never told Bland why he had stopped her, nor why he was going to ticket her. He didn’t ticket her and let her go on her way.
The officer screamed, “I will light you up!” instead of being calm and de escalating the situation. The officer was used physical force and verbal threats when he didn’t need to do so.
It’s also been pointed out that the cop approached her at a speed that made her need to change lanes quickly for her own safety. Everything about this stinks. This police officer and the people defending him make me sick. The White Progressives who are pearl-clutching because BlackLivesMatter activists dared to disrupt NetrootsNation/St. Bernie and force this issue/case into the spotlight.
Also, too: District Attorney Mathis: “Sandra Bland was very combative. It was not a model traffic stop. It was not a model person that was stopped..”.
Gee, who coulda predicted that???
You can bet all those “Lady should have just obeyed to officer.” types would be singing a different tune if they were talking about the USSC decision about legalizing homosexual marriage. It’s always the “other” people who should obey the officer, not themselves.
The first question to ask is: Why was she in jail at all? Why did this police officer expend public resources to arrest someone who had done, literally nothing.
throwaway
as far as i can tellt he edited parts are when the officer explains himself.
Pure speculation: the original did not have a guy calmly stating how he d id everything right.
Arrhg! Why didn’t I think of that?! Yes, he does sound a bit blusterous about his heroic actions that day. *spits*
Yes.
Here’s an experience I had. I do not mean to suggest that this is in any way comparable to what happened to Sandra, but it is illustrative of the mindset of some cops:
At this time, I worked an evening shift and was leaving work around midnight after a hard day. It was a very cold night. I get pulled over for having a burned out license plate light. Cop does the usual BS about DL and registration, then goes back to his car to run my data, I guess. So I’m sitting in my freezing car for about 20 minutes, very tired and annoyed at being stopped for such a piddling reason. The cop finally comes back, and I let my annoyance show in the tone of my voice. I never said any disrespectful words, just my tone and my face showed how I felt. The cop then says, “What’s the matter with you? Have you been drinking?”
So this little martinet thinks nobody would dare to sass him unless they were drunk. And I’m a white middle-aged male. If he took that attitude with me, I hate to think how he would treat a black person.
Why was she detained in the first place? Smoking in a legally permitted location?
Maybe Officer Friendly thought she was going to sell loose cigarettes?
(I grew up in the Baltimore/Washington corridor and even us ci-devant kids knew PG county cops were dangerous thugs. In the 80s (and probably today; I haven’t gone back) the neighborhoods were pretty segregated. Bet the cops were all ready to pull someone dark-skinned over for not signalling or smoking in their car, if it was in the wrong neighborhood.
Fuck. Just fuck.
I remember when Maryland passed a law against carrying guns if you had convictions for violent crimes or domestic abuse, and the police complained that something like 20% of the force would be unable to do their job…. So the law was modified to exclude cops and everyone (except for anyone with a brain) was happy.
Over at Dispatches From the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton figures body cams will reduce police use of excessive force.
Based on this and other police dash cam videos, I’d say he’s completely off base.
Yeah, way off-base. Body cams are not going to restore the faith in the white justice system. We have videos of everything that goes on but still nothing. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a lapel, a dash or held in the hand of a bystander, cops are untouchables.
I have an old friend who is a sheriff for a rural police department (not Texas). His response to this: “Bitch had it coming. If you don’t want to get tased, if you don’t want to get beat up, if you don’t want to get shot, quit being dumbasses and do exactly what the LEO tells you. If a cop feels threatened by you for any reason, they have the full force of the law behind them to subdue you”.
This is a guy I’ve known for 30 years. This (among other things) is what is wrong with police today. They feel like they are your superiors, you and your life mean nothing to them. They have been groomed since they started on the force that YOU are their enemy, not that they are there to help you. If you do not submit to them, you are being belligerent and they have every right to be judge, jury, and if need be executioner. Dog help you if you are not white because even though all non-cops are the enemy, people of color are all scum.
The thin blue line must be broken and change must come from within or change will never happen. Every time something like this happens the punishment to the cop must be swift and severe. Police forces are given a lot of power, but there must also be equal punishment for those who abuse that power and betray that trust.
I notice that some people have signed a Change.org petition requesting an Department of Justice investigation of Sandra Bland’s death in order to chastise its supporters, as if an online petition were a blog comments section. They want petitioners to know that #BlackLivesMatter is racist, that whites as well as blacks are harassed by police, and that they are sure that a DOJ investigation will prove that everyone has jumped to conclusions without having all the facts, because her death probably had nothing to do with race.
In the different case of Treyvon Martin’s death, I noticed in the comments sections of online newspaper articles that people thought he wouldn’t have amounted to anything had he lived. One person wrote that it wasn’t as if he was going to grow up to be a great physicist or anything. People have made similar comments about other black Americans killed by law enforcement or vigilantes.
I find myself trying to tamp down my anger over people’s inability to think logically. For example:
Why aren’t these detractors willing to consider #BlackLivesMatter in context? #BlackLivesMatter goes beyond meaning #BlackLivesMatterToo. Read in context, it means #WeFeelThatLawEnforcementAndTheJusticeSystemInGeneralViewBlackLivesAsEspeciallyWorthless
GivenTheLongHistoryOfViewingBlacksAsBiologicallyInferiorInTheU.S. Of course, one of these hash tags is more effective than another on what’s essentially a microblogging platform that limits users to 140 characters per post.
Why don’t detractors realize that if people really wanted to, they could just use a hash tag that would be unequivocally racist? You know what would be racist? #OnlyBlackLivesMatter. Maybe some individuals think that, but they don’t define the meaning of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.
Why don’t detractors realize that when they say, “We don’t have all the facts, and therefore cannot make any conclusions about what happened” and “This was not about race, and the officer is being vilified for dealing appropriately with a violent criminal” in the same breath, they are contradicting themselves? They’ve made a conclusion. Own it already.
Why do detractors think that blacks have to be Nieztchean Supermen and Superwomen in order to deserve a punishment that fits the crime– if, in fact, they deserve a punishment at all? What happened to the First Amendment right to “mouth off”? What happened to traffic tickets and noise citations and warnings not to trespass on HOA-ruled property?
By the way, are the non-blacks making these comments holding non-blacks up to the same standard? Does your life only matter if you went to MIT and discovered new extrasolar systems or invented better microprocessors or engineered bacteria to eat plastic in landfills? What do they do for a living?
I’m bending over backward to be fair. I cannot possibly be the only black person doing so.
moarscienceplz, 27: I was pulled over in Texas for the exact same reason. The cop took me to the back of the car to explain why he had pulled me over, and why he was perfectly justified in arresting me on the spot if he chose. He also brought me back there to get me away from my wife. He then went on to grill me: Where are you going? Why? How long will you be there? Where are you from? What do you do there? Who is that in the front seat? Lots of questions that were absolutely none of his business. It was obvious that he was trying to get a rise out of me, and was hard to not get openly angry.
Then he told me to stay where I was, and went to grill my wife with the same questions. Now, sometimes when we went on trips, my wife didn’t want to know the itinerary. She liked to be surprised by what I planned. So I wondered how he’d react to that. Luckily, she had had the window open, and heard everything I’d said. I also downright scared because my wife usually speaks her mind pretty bluntly. And she was eight months pregnant.
We, too, wondered what would have happened if we had not been white. This was a local cop waiting at night at the edge of his tiny town.
Lynna, OM at 21:
The only time I hear references to de-escalation are after a cop has escalated a situation, usually fatally.
At a traffic stop, absolutely every syllable that comes from a cop’s mouth is a pretense to finding an excuse to at least ticket you, if not arrest you, search your vehicle, and confiscate your property (“Do you know why I pulled you over?” isn’t a loaded question at all). That’s kind of escalating things right there…
Juniper, 33: Clearly, lots of people don’t get it. Even prominent Democrats running for President.
From the partial transcript:
Some days I just don’t want to get out of bed. Today is one of them. But I have to. Because I have to find a job. So I can support myself and put food on the table and feed my cats and try to make a better life for myself. But there’s that little voice in the back of my head that says “Look at this shit, it doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter how good you are. It doesn’t matter what you say or do to try and make the world a better place. None of it matter because you’re black, and everywhere you turn in this country, you’re reminded that your life doesn’t matter.”
Fuck.
Oh, and to make things worse:
CNN panel explodes after ex-cop says Sandra Bland died because she was arrogant from the beginning.
From the analysis of possible edits of the video:
Juniper, #33
Hear, hear!
And seconding this:
“We don’t have all the facts” is just another dog whistle.
, “A man leaves the truck in the center of the frame at 25:05. For the next 15 seconds, he walks toward the right of the frame and leaves. At 25:19, he suddenly appears again, promptly disappears, then returns at 25:22. The same footage of him walking is subsequently repeated.”
That’s Theodore Glitch. The “Glitch” the cops are talking about. Theodore is unstuck in space and time and jumps around like he’s in a badly edited video.
Also, just another data point on Texas cops, the one time I’ve been pulled over was in my hometown, about 3 months after I got my license at 17. I’m driving down a surface street to church. And got pulled over by a cop going the opposite direction for no reason. He pulled me over, ran my plates, then made something up about thinking my registration had expired (it wasn’t). Reality was is he wanted to check my license because he thought I looked too young to be driving. I was 4’6″ and 70 lbs when I was 17.
Point being, I only know of a handful of traffic stops that weren’t an excuse for looking at something else. Seatbelt laws are another one of the common excuses.
Is it really so hard for cops to be professional and reasonable?
@#10/11:
From what I’ve read, this is just default procedure for any death which occurs in a jail cell, and not indicative of any suspected wrongdoing.
I guess it really is textbook terrorism. Murder some people – black people, that is – more or less at random, just because you can and because you feel like it, and yay, result – you get millions of people justifiably in fear for their lives if you so much as look cross-eyed at them. You get a vast nation where people explicitly teach their children to say “sir” to cops and not so much as move without permission if a cop stops them because they’re terrified that otherwise the cops might kill their kids. Real terrorists.
Of course at the same time US mainstream media are all over freedom-and-justice-for-all, like in the old old Lethal Weapon episode where Danny Glover plays a cop creating a distraction by pretending he wants to move to Apartheid-era South Africa. Where the hysterical, side-splittingly hilarious punchline is the embassy official wondering how he could possibly want to go there “because you’re black”.
mwalters @43:
I think it’s notable though, given the narrative being put forth that she committed suicide.
And people still want to yell at black people for being violent, for rioting, for protesting…
How many more black people must be murdered, by the damn police, no less, before we start looking at the true instigator of violence: White Supremacy?
I’m just curious…
mwalters
Considering that the default position was ‘she committed suicide’, the fact that this will be investigated at all is a major step of the progressive kind. So no, not the default.
Thanks for your @33, Juniper. Thank you. What gets me is that a lot of the young black people ending up dead are young people with futures (or what would be called a future if they were white) – Mike Brown was heading to college, Sandra Bland was accomplished and also heading towards a new job, etc. And many of them are so young that it is impossible to know where they will end up. Look at any young white person of a similar age, they are just as unaccomplished. The only difference in one’s ability to predict their future is that one set of young people is black, and the other is white. And somehow that seems to be a determinant of one’s worth.
I hate how that works.
Marcus Ranum, #30:
I am simultaneously shocked that someone with a criminal record like that can join / stay in the police force and that the percentage is so low. After reading FTB for years I should probably know better: cops always get the law’s thumbs up after the fact; the other 80% may just have been smart enough to get their badges first.
That anyone can use what an unknowable future might or might not bring as some kind of excuse for killing another human being is utterly disgusting to me. I have worked with kids for thirty years. To think about any one of them — and I sure have not liked them all — as potentially in that situation, makes me physically sick.
To look at a life based on almost no information and to wonder whether it was fine to end it. Talk about sociopathic!
To clarify, from what I’ve read, it is required by policy that they must treat as a murder and investigate as such any death that occurs in a jail cell. So that fact that there is a murder investigation taking place is just what they are required to do by their own policies and regulations. The fact that the public position they’re holding to is that it was a suicide says to me that, given a murder investigation is required, regardless of the circumstances or background of the death, the investigation may just be “going through the motions.”
Although the FBI involvement might be another story and indicative that’s being given more scrutiny.
komarov, 48: I recall reading, decades ago, that cops were the most likely profession to be involved in domestic abuse, and that that was one reason getting them to take it seriously was so difficult.
It is quite hard to understand how, even a violent thug of a cop, would still do so, knowing that he is being filmed, by the dashcam in his very own policecar. Not like some random passerby vidding from their phonecam; but the cam he himself has on his dash to record these traffic stops for evidence if the suspect attacks the cop. And to just be glib and smirk, is missing the real problem. To think he can getaway with violence by just trimming the video, apparently required a lot more skill than available. The editing of that video was pretty clumsy and inept. My cynicism tells me the problem is bigger than just the cop trying to edit his video to redact the evidence. It seems there was a lot of assistance, from more people in the hierarchy.
I play basketball in a 50-and-over league. One of the black guys I play with (in his mid-60’s, been a lawyer, owned his own business) has talked about raising his two sons, and the conversations he’s had with them about what it means to be black in this culture.
His sons are ivy league educated and highly successful, but he told them that in their dealings with police, they need to be deferential, even if a police officer is being unreasonable. Basically, the onus is on them to keep any interaction from getting out of control.
It’s not a conversation I ever had to have with my two sons.
re @41:
reminiscent of 41 Shots by Springsteen, after a “event” in NYC where a man saw the cops, raised his hands, showing his wallet to get his ID, and …(41 shots)… The song includes a line, of a mother telling her kids, “… always keep your hands in sight…”
Gladson tried to address this event: as a typical result of the training, for typical cops, being too high strung, and adrenaline-primed, to be reasonable at all.
It’s horrific how unsurprising this video is.
@opposablethumbs #44
What may be even worse: you get millions defending your actions.
I finished Coates book in one reading. To me it’s like being alive when Souls of Black Folk was published, written by a contemporary about contemporary times.
One of his salient points is that when we talk about police brutality and police reform…we abstract and remove the actions of the policy from the society who sanctions the police to do what they do. Their actions are not aberrational anymore than white supremacy is an aberration that mars an otherwise non white supremacist American history. It’s part of the fabric of this country and has been from the beginning
Annnnd this: Texas Department of Public Safety releases new version of #SandraBland traffic stop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaW09Ymr2BA …
Glad they had a chance to re-edit that video, because of all the glitches that occurred while it was being uploaded.
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/05/south-carolina-home-owner-police/
fredericksparks
Can you please post that here, please? I know it’s from May, but it’s relevant there, too.
Cops as rabid animals. And everybody is just totally okay with it.
Then he tells her to put out her cigarette, and she refuses. And for that, he arrests her, manhandles out of her car, and roughs her up offscreen.
First, the cop had no reason to tell her to put out her cigarette, let alone arrest her for refusing to do so. And second, there’s no need to waste any time telling drivers to get out of their cars in minor traffic stops, or pulling them out of their cars — if you’re inclined to get violent, then the cop is safer if you’re stuck in your car. That is, in fact, why cops tend to tell people NOT to get out of their cars when they’re pulled over.
Short answer: this cop intentionally started a fight just to give himself an excuse to harass and abuse an innocent person.
Amused @14
So, basically you’re guilty of resisting arrest unless the cop decides otherwise. For which you can be violently arrested. Which means your default status is “in prison” and you’re only walking free courtesy of the police. That’s something from military dictatorships.
Also known as “being a cop”.
Sorry if any decent LEOs feel slighted by that, but you have to realize what kind of group you’re a part of. I’m willing to grant that you’re not like all the others, but only if you’re also willing to grant that I can’t tell that from looking at you and therefore have no choice but to assume that any individual cop I meet is a creepy, homicidal maniac, including you.
You get my trust when you earn it. You earn it when you clean out your own ranks.
Okay…
I get that sometimes situations get hazardous and that police are allowed to protect themselves.
I get that they often have to deal with the worst of humanity (often from their partners… wait… stop… be charitable for now…).
I get that being a police officer can be a stressful, scary job.
I get all of that and any number of things.
But for Spaghetti Monster’s sake, wearing a badge and carrying a gun does not give an officer the right to take a fat old shit in someone’s space and then arrest them for complaining about it.
Yes, it’s a better strategy to simply and politely comply with an officer’s request. But failure to do so does not mean one should be arrested, period, full stop.
This officer escalated the situation, and seemed to be almost Jonesing for a fight. He probably watches this video on loop and furiously tickles himself at his bravery, for handling the woman’s threatening cigarette with such macho force. This all could’ve been resolved in about two minutes, but NO we have to go toe to toe with a woman over a cigarette during a routine traffic stop. Ridiculous.
I once made the mistake of sprinting past a pair of police officers so I could catch a city bus. It was just taking in passengers about a half block away and if I missed it, I’d be late for the part-time/after-school job I’d had at the time. I’d made it to the end of the line of people getting on the bus, and just before I could get in, the cops appeared behind me and demanded to know where I was going in such a hurry. When I told them I just needed to catch the bus, they asked me if I thought I was funny. “No sir, I just don’t want to be late for work.” They motioned for the bus to go ahead and lectured me about how they really should take me to the station for refusing to answer their questions. But then they explained that they would be super nice & not even give me a ticket.
It was just such an obvious & petty power-play of intentionally making me late then implying I should be grateful that they didn’t screw up my day any worse. I’m naturally a very non-confrontational person in addition to being white, female and about 16 at the time. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had any trace of a backbone or was a visible minority.
In Texas she was stopped for not indicating???!!
I live in the DFW area and I can assure you that well over half of all lane changes are done without signalling!
It’s one of (many) things I don’t like about Texas drivers.
Yeah, signaling in Texas is a dare. Doesn’t happe much.
As for CNN and all the other news networks: are there ANY ex-cop commentors on these issues that doesn’t come across as a pompous privileged asshole? If there is, I haven’t seen one. Their PR would benefit if they let these be onesided discussions relative to sending the reps they are sending.
Uncle Ebeneezer @ 22:
I’m watching the new video that rq linked to, since the original is no longer available, and this is exactly what Bland says she was doing. At 8:45, as best as I can make out:
Then the cop totally loses it. He’s very, very clearly in the wrong here. And she totally calls him on all his shit as he’s doing it. She’s a fucking hero.
I’m naturally a very non-confrontational person in addition to being white, female and about 16 at the time.
I’m willing to bet those cops harassed you because you were young, pretty, and not available to them.* A lot of cops are lower-class men driven by longstanding frustration and resentment toward women (especially women of higher caste than themselves) who turn them on but aren’t willing to give them any. Marital problems that arise from being a cop don’t exactly help either.
______________________________
*Not that being available to them would have got you any better treatment.
For more context, Dashcam footage clearly shows the real reason Sandra Bland changed lanes in the first place:
Yep, to all those of you, who, sometimes, like me, when changing lanes for emergency vehicles, don’t stop to think for long enough to turn a blinker on. Don’t do that, eh?
I wouldn’t worry about that a bit. It’s like being worried about offending a unicorn.
rq@71
well…if you stop and think long enough to use a blinker, it’s TOO LONG, why are you NOT RESPONDING TO COP RIGHT NOW THIS NANOSECOND?!!!
As you know, there’s no f*cking way to win that game with this kind of policing–everything is an excuse…the abuse is the whole point, apparently. “Respec’ mah Authoriteh” indeed.
*spit*
Hoosier X #72
Hey now, we don’t want to become bigots of the Left. There are many decent LEOs out there. There are also many who intend to be decent, but are harboring unrecognized racism. So are many of us.
@Hoosier X (#72):
Tsk! Don’t be like that! There is still some slight chance that unicorns exist…
Evidently a 43 year old man was gunned down by a University of Cincinnati police man.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/ohio-mans-family-demands-answers-after-campus-cop-shoots-and-kills-him-during-traffic-stop/
One thousand x Infinity internet dollars if you can guess the skin color of the individual killed…
moarscienceplz @74:
Not sure if you’ve been paying attention, but African-Americans don’t have the luxury of giving cops the benefit of the doubt in this country. If you care about our plight, please don’t argue the point you’re arguing.
The official story is that the man gave the officer a bottle of alcohol instead of his license and then tried to drive off after, you guessed it, struggling with the officer. I mean, hell, all of this may be true. But my god when the source for all this information is a police officer who was caught holding a smoking gun… Well…
Tony #77
I don’t understand what I did to offend.
@74
I’m basing my opinion on personal experience, the numerous murderer cops of recent months and the EPIC FAIL of police response to these incidents. When cops do respond to these incidents on social media, ALL OF IT falls into the “Wah wah the poor cops! Sandra Bland was no saint! If you don’t suck the cop’s dick you deserved to be dead! Nobody notices when a cop does something good (i.e. HIS JOB!)” category.
I have not seen a single cop on social media – even unanimously – admitting that any cops are out of control.
Am I setting the bar too high by expecting a “good cop” to respond the way any normal decent sane human being would?
If so, forgive me.
Hoosier X #80
Of course not. But that’s not what you said. Your post declared that decent LEOs are as rare as unicorns, IOW, non-existent.
My first interaction with a police officer was to be effectively told to my face that I was a liar about my stalker attempting to break in, because I was scared and hid for hours. And that’s me as a white woman. My subsequent interactions with police officers have been a mixed bag, but there has tended to be a large degree of patronization that my male friends (white and asian) don’t face. I’ve heard the stories from my black coworker-then-manager and his interactions with police his whole life.
So… no. I don’t give any cop the benefit of the doubt, just as (sorry, not sorry) I also don’t give men the benefit of the doubt when I’m alone and I don’t know them. My former manager was taught to be afraid of cops when he was a kid. Every interaction he has had only reinforced that. Why should anyone give the benefit of the doubt to someone who is very likely going to be an asshole and might very well hurt them?
Rowan #82
First off, I’m very sorry for what happened to you.
I don’t think “benefit of the doubt” really is involved when someone is interacting with a particular cop or cops. They should behave properly 100% of the time, and your reactions shouldn’t affect that, period.
The “benefit of the doubt” when we in the general public or on a jury are hearing or seeing evidence about some past incident is indeed far too often given to the cops rather than the other persons. I don’t dispute that at all.
I’m just saying that when we are discussing a group of people that numbers in the hundreds of thousands to make blanket statements that none of them is a decent person isn’t very constructive.
rq @47:
And Paul K @49:
Thank you for pointing this out, too.
moarscienceplz @79:
You know how women hate it when guys say “not all guys are bad” when discussing the horrible shit guys do?
You just pulled something similar with “not all cops”.
Worse than that, I would say. Cops are all signing on to a corrupt and broken system, with laws that hurt people and shouldn’t be enforced. If some cop simply doesn’t realize this when they first sign on, you might think they have a chance at being a decent person for a while, but the fact is they were too fucking indecent to take a good hard look at the world before they went out into it with their guns and badges. That person is ready to fight, before they knew what the fight was even about, which also isn’t a decent way to act. Maybe it’s asking for too much to have the right kind of perspective on every bad law that’s out there, but you simply can’t be utterly clueless about what you’re doing at that point. And everybody is more than willing to shift the responsibility to somebody else — whether it’s “criminals,” or it’s these other “bad cops” that are allegedly rare, or their superior because they were “just following orders.” Maybe they’re desperate to keep their jobs or think they’re the special ones who aren’t just as responsible for all of the shit we see every day. But if they’re not even asking themselves what makes them different from any other armed gang, then they’re not getting any extra sympathy from me.
The original edited version which PZ originally post but which has since been taken down is still available here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkqw_7mrJnU
I haven’t compared the two together much (there’s only so much I can stomach) but it seems to me that in the edited version around 25:00 (the famous guy in the truck glitching) that the cop is radioing in to his supervisor and is talking consistantly and coherently whereas in the version without the glitches he pauses and is not so clear. I get the impression the glitchy version has a doctored soundtrack.
Anyone else get this impression? Like I said, I didn’t compare the two closely. (My roommate yells “I dont want to hear that” and I can’t blame ’em.)
I’ve been stopped several times and harassed in my town for walking. Among some of my ‘favorites’: Walking At Night, Walking At Night Looking While Not Looking Female Enough From Behind, Walking At Night On Halloween, and once, Walking In Daylight While Carrying Roadkill Hubcaps. Has there ever been a cop around any of the times I gave into utter exhaustion and got in a car with a stranger and had it almost end Very Badly? Of course not, but I feel sure that if there had, I would have been schooled on how that was all my own fault for Getting In A Car With A Stranger While Female. But several have passed right by me while I was having serious asthma attacks, and the time I nearly broke an ankle and ended up sitting almost in the road in agony before I could manage to get up and hike three miles to get where I needed to go. I’ve had a lot of attitude from these cops, and lot of those sorts of stupid question moments or ones where I tried to answer and incurred more crap because suddenly I was the one with attitude. For simply trying to answer. I’m not very good with people on a good day, and strangers and stress make that worse. For awhile I had one of those little cards you can print off the internet for people on the spectrum to try to quietly hand to cops in situations like these, but then my backpack was stolen (no cops were helpful for that, either.) I’m figuring now, like some others are saying here, that if I were black, these bad-enough encounters would probably have been a whole lot worse.
The problem is that the #NotAllCops retort is just so incredibly fucking common. Every time people start getting outraged about police brutality, racism, corruption, and so on, it seems like the majority of people start taking offense. They will chastise you for dismissing all cops because of a “few bad eggs”. They will smugly tell you to never ask for a cop to protect you again. And while this happens, you will find that the “few bad eggs” are protected by their fellow cops in their individual precincts. You will find that other cops will not be calling for justice, and will be along those victim blaming or doing what they can to just dismiss the incident. No, not all cops are like that. But it seems like every time there is a cop like that, there is an entire department enabling that cop and complicit in that cop’s abuses and in ensuring that the cop in question is not properly punished. And then there is consistent skew in the cops speaking about the event afterward, strongly skewing away from actually opposing the events and strongly skewing towards trying to find whatever excuses they can for their fellow cop (the victim was a bad person, the victim was not compliant enough, police work is hard, it was just an accident, and so on and so on and so on).
Want us to not think “all” cops are bad? Get more cops speaking out against bad cops instead of issuing apologetics for them. Make it so that the “bad eggs” are more frequently individual cops behaving badly and not entire departments behaving badly. And, dear police folk, dare to hold your peers accountable and actually bring to them justice just like they were any other mere mortal human being who committed a crime, instead of treating them as dearest friends or ubermensch who are above the law. Once we get past those barriers, then we can start worrying about people being too dismissive of police collectively when we are seeing frequent patterns of abuses of power. Sound fair?
I cannot help being reminded of this series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjöwall_and_Wahlöö
They frighteningly accurately describe the attitude of such police officers and analyze the system that not only enables but actually encourages this attitude.
Speaking of cops apologizing for other cops: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/22/what-cops-are-saying-about-the-sandra-bland-video/?tid=pm_pop_b
In order, paraphrasing:
“Officers have a right to tell you to leave your vehicle for any reason, he didn’t do anything wrong”
“He could legally tell her to leave the vehicle. But I don’t wanna judge, but me, personally, I wouldn’t have done that.”
“I’m not saying he is wrong, but I would have let it slide”
(First person adds, quoting verbatim here: “why did she light up a cigarette? Was she an anti-police advocate, was she under duress from a criminal, or was she herself doing something criminal?”)
“We couldn’t see inside the car, maybe he wanted to get a better look and suspected her of a crime”
[Baleeted comment that the article says existed to victim blame]
[Another victim blaming comment sarcastically talking about how they always get to go on there way because they never say anything like what Sandra Bland said]
It is interesting that even those daring to criticize the officer are milquetoast about it and make sure to insist upon the oh-so-crucial detail that ordering her to leave her vehicle was perfectly legal. Yeah. Thanks cops, great work. Much ethics.
The train of though behind #notallsomething was bound to crop up, as it always does. It’s not even wrong to bring up. Strictly (i.e. statistically) speaking it is entirely true. It’s
virtuallyimpossible that all cops are horrible horrible people on a lifelong powertrip.But so what? If you want to argue that not all something are terrible in some manner, by all means. But why is that important? Sure, people’s feelings get hurt when they get lumped in with the bad apples, but generally that’s about it.*
So, in lieu of damned good reasons to look at individuals rather than the group, my response to “not all” is “too many“. As has been pointed out, some people simply don’t have the luxury of looking at individuals. By the time they get close enough it may be too late for them to back away…
*Because the not-alls are generally in a position of power or privilege, meaning there is very little danger of real discrimination or harm because of them being categorised in a certain way.
#notallexcops at any rate
Here are a couple of audio files from CBC radio’s The Current
A former policeman is doing something about the lack of a database on shootings by the police.
And a former Baltimore police officer blows the whistle on brutality and racism.
– Arlo Guthrie “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”
@anteprepro #90 said it just right. A bad apple is bad enough, but it’s irrelevant how many bad apples there are exactly when all the other apples that are supposed to be good are excusing and covering up for the bad ones. Give the victims some justice dammit, that would be a nice start.
NPR had an interview with a former police officer who now works in law. He noted that the order to get out of the vehicle is a lawful order which failure to follow is grounds for a “Resisting a Lawful Command” bit of resisting arrest. He also noted that the officer was responsible for every single escalation in the incident. He called it “legal, but not good, policing.”
It does seem technically legal, but it is the very worst way to “serve and protect.”
Who protects us from the protectors?
I don’t care how many fresh eggs you put into your omelet. If there’s one rotten egg in there, I’m not eating it.
moarscienceplz
Being “decent” isn’t enough.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
I do realise that I, and many others, are asking for something close to heroism for decent cops to stand up against the violent thugs that bring negative attention to forces all round the country. But they’re the only ones in a real position to do something.
What about the unions? Do the “decent” cops stand proudly beside all their fellow officers when they close ranks in cases like this? Or do they say this isn’t a good case to support. Do they laugh at the jokes about how one of their number intimidated or physically attacked a member of the public? Or do they say that person overstepped the mark a bit.
I’m afraid that being decent – and quiet – in the situations that less violent or bigoted cops find themselves in simply is not enough. I know that’s tough on them. Not everyone has it in them to go against the prevailing norms in their social or work groups. But that’s what is needed.
(mostlymarvelous is a replacement for mildlymagnificent. My new computer doesn’t seem to get along with WordPress or much else.)
Autumn @ 97: So basically the best thing that can be said for the actions seen in the video is that some of them weren’t technically illegal?
I know that defense. That is the defense of the child who, having done something they knew the parent would object to, protests “But you didn’t tell me not to do (that specific thing)!” An adult doesn’t get to claim they didn’t know it was wrong just because it wasn’t spelled out for them.
I couldn’t watch the whole video, but what I saw showed a police officer who wanted to be violent and was looking for an excuse, and was setting up the situation so he could do what he wanted to do.
Cripes, some of the comments elsewhere on this video – sounds like the advice about dealing with grizzly bears: Stay away from them, don’t provoke them, and they may kill you anyway. The difference is that grizzlies very rarely kill anyone, and when they do they usually end up dying themselves because they’re dangerous to people. And the bear genuinely doesn’t know better. Cops are thinking human beings and are supposed to know better.
There are claims now that she was suicidal in 2014. But the family denies that vehemently. Also, she was about to begin work at a new job, she was moving there. It doesn’t seem likely for her to kill herself. Not saying it’s impossible, but I’m highly doubtful. I hope an independent investigation can clear up that question.
But even if she indeed did? The cops still bear the responsibility, not least of which because they didn’t fulfill their duty for more regular checkups on the cell of a suicidal person. And even then, very importantly of course…
She should never have been arrested for a minor infraction and the “crime” of not being agreeable towards the cop in the first place.
It is a common dynamic, isn’t it?
The core of predatory sociopaths carrying out unambiguous and flagrant attacks. Their legion of lost boys running interference for the core by defending the entire group generally and themselves specifically. The dismissive worshipers from the Church of the Holy Middle Ground pouring out of the pews to scold the victims and their supporters.
Somebody point me at Orac, I have such a finger wagging to unleash upon him. #NotAllTumors
@71
Being from lower-class, knowing lower-class, and knowing how terrible things higher-class people do (are Berlusconi and Strauss-Kahn lower class to you?), I’d appreciate if you considered it’s actually the privilege that at least enables them to do it – not the lack of it. Same thing with the thing you said about relationships, active relationships don’t really seem to stop men in power from being terrible.
Here’s why I’m so down on cops and so dismissive of the idea of the existence of “good cops”:
Because in all these months of heightened scrutiny on police behavior, I’ve yet to see any evidence that there is such a thing as a good cop.
“Good cops” become either “bad cops” or “ex-cops” pretty quickly.
Believe me, I would love love love to see any contrary evidence.
@104 Hoosier X
And even if “good cops” don’t become “bad cops” through direct actions of their own against citizens, many of them become “bad cops” through their inaction, their aid in cover-ups, their common, partially understandable, yet largely reprehensible “we stick together, literally no matter what”-attitude. Or did you include those people who “just” provide cover for their colleagues in the “bad cops”-category already? And, yes, when a “good cop” remains a “good cop” through speaking out when something happens, they are pretty likely to need to look for another job. We wouldn’t want “snitches” among the cops, would we?
re 105:
+
as in “passive”, in the sense of “not rockin the boat”. The good cops are those who passively disregard behavior of other cops and only look for perps amongst the population they are protecting (with all their concentration).
I see I’m exaggerating a bit. However, there is a cognitive bias at work there.
A form of “concentration blindness”. Like when asked to watch a group of people bouncing balls, to count the bounces; the observer will be completely unable to see the clown wandering through the scene no matter how blatant the clown is.
They don’t actively “cover” the aggressive cops, more like passive camouflage material.
Rather than call the passive cops “bad through inaction”, preference might be “inconsequential cops” [considered “ineffective”, but that would be inapplicable also]. I’m stuck with thinking “bad” implies action, while inaction is just neither good nor bad, either of which requires action.
The two things that puzzle me about this case — beyond the basic fact that an innocent woman wound up dead in police custody — are:
a) why, when the cop was reportedly speeding toward Sandra Bland’s vehicle with lights on, did he pull her over? Didn’t he have urgent business elsewhere?
b) The video surveillance of her jail cell reportedly showed no traffic for 90 minutes before medics arrived and found her hanging. How did anyone know medics were needed? (OK, this may be bad reporting by the media…)
@106 slithey tove
I see what you’re saying. Perhaps this is something of a question of cultural perceptions or personal experience or something, but I personally would say that you can become “bad through inaction”. This may be a bit of a tangent, but still: You at least bear responsibility, if you are at all aware of what is going on (you mention people not seeing what’s happening because they’re focused on something else entirely; I suppose my point wouldn’t necessarily apply to those). Not for nothing do some countries even impose legal punishments when people don’t help a person in an immediate emergency (including emergencies they didn’t cause, so I’m not just talking about hit-and-run situations). You’re not expected to put yourself in mortal danger in those countries, but you are expected to aid if possible or at the very least inform the proper authorities of what’s going on, call ambulance, rescue workers or whatever. Similarly, if a cop is aware that what his colleague is doing is wrong and he covers for them through inaction, I do think that makes the first one a “bad cop”, too. If a cop is honestly blind to what is happening, I guess he might be negligent, but not nearly as responsible as one who is aware.
If she had put out her cigarette as requested that might have been the end of it, but we’ll never know. I’m curious to know why he pulled a u-turn and charged up behind her. Surely most people would attempt to move out of the way under those circumstances. It just seems like a tactic to entrap those who do so without signalling. I suspect that putting out her cigarette would not have been the end of it. She complied with every command she was given up to that point. Her reason for being irritated and her refusal to put out the cigarette had no bearing and did not prevent him from doing his job or issuing the ticket or warning. It seems like the entire incident was instigated and escalated by the cop. It seems to me that cop is a bully who enjoys provoking people he perceives as powerless into saying or doing something that he can use to justify abusing his authority to “teach them a lesson”. I suspect this cop pulls this shit all the time and, if Sandra Bland had not died in custody, I doubt we would have heard about this incident at all. But that’s just a lot of speculation.
There’s no doubt that polite and unhesitating compliance is best policy for dealing with police. This is the same advice we are given for handling confrontations with muggers, but it should not be for the same reason. When a man with a knife demands your wallet you should comply because if you piss him off he may fuck you up. When a cop asks a question or gives a command he may need your compliance for reasons of which you’re not aware. You should not have to be concerned about pissing him off and getting fucked up.
The Texas Standard dissects the entire interaction and labels each part as legal/illegal/against de-escalation tactics.
Unless you’re black. Then it doesn’t matter.
I should think that the onus should be placed on police to act in a polite, welcoming manner in order to acquire information from the populace they are supposedly protecting. They should be ready to explain any and all stops, any and all moves, and be willing to submit to citizens filming their actions, as well as willing and able to reply to their questions in a calm, comforting manner that underlines the fact that yes, this officer is a person who is capable of working under duress and in situations of high stress without losing their patience, or denying the dignity of the person (or people) they are speaking to.
Why is the onus on the stopped person to be polite? And compliant? Why shouldn’t the onus be on the officer, to be clear and calm in their actions? I would think that they, with all their training, and as the greater authority, should show a better side of themselves at all times, no matter what kind of bullshit (or no-shit) they’re getting from the people with whom they interact.
And this is why I hate the “just be polite/compliant/etc.” arguments – they completely erase any and all aggressive and provocative actions from the officer as correct and justified. And I don’t care that officers are vested with some sort of ‘higher’ authority, that means they have even more responsibility to act with care and dignity, not less. It makes their asinine decisions and impulsive escalations much less excusable, not more. And no, I don’t care what kind of people they have to deal with daily – that’s their job, they should be prepared for it and trained for it, and ready to accept that they have this greater burden of maintaining a professional demeanour.
The cigarette has nothing to do with it. Let’s put the responsibility where it belongs, on the officer.
I’m just saying that when we are discussing a group of people that numbers in the hundreds of thousands to make blanket statements that none of them is a decent person isn’t very constructive.
Who the fuck actually said that? No one said that n one of them are decent; we’re merely saying there’s so much observable bad behavior that a) we don’t know and can’t know which cops are decent until it’s too late; and b) decent cops are clearly not prevailing in their conflict with bad cops. (How many times have decent cops rallied to kick a bad cop off the force after he’s killed someone without good cause?)
you know the thing that I suspect is really different about this case and the other cases we have been hearing about lately is that we are hearing about them in a very different way then we have in the past. If we would have even heard about any of these cases in the early ’60’s it would be covered very differently and hardly any one would have taken notice in the 50’s or the 40’s at least in the white community and news services. and unless it was a giant “race riot” it would never have made the national news . My point is that police brutality generally and police racial enforcement is not by any stretch a new thing what is new is the coverage in the news and the reaction generally. That is new and the coverage and the reaction will eventually bring about some kind of positive change (I deeply hope ).
uncle frogy
Seconding rq’s 111 and Raging Bee’s 112.
#112 Raging Bee
If you follow the argument back, you find this one:
#73 Hoosier X
The perils of a commenting system without threads …
I’m sure most of the employees that worked at Gus Burger’s were decent enough people.
But frankly, after finding mold on my hamburger bun, I’m not inclined to go back because it means that on some level, nearly all of them failed at their jobs.
I’ve worked at jobs alongside assholes. And you know something interesting? The assholes only remain working there if they are allowed to. If their behavior isn’t tolerated by the other employees and management doesn’t have its head jammed firmly up its ass, the asshole doesn’t last long.
Hey youtubers, ya know I feel ya, I hate when people fail to signal. It’s a pretty big problem around here, and I certainly wish a few more got ticketed.
Ticketed. Not arrested unless they actually did something worth being arrested for (like tearing up a ticket, maybe?), and certainly not killed, if that’s what happened. Yeah, can’t say for certain that’s what happened in this specific case (or any specific case short of evidence), but as a trend it’s clear at least a LOT of these mysterious deaths are the result of the police.
Youtubers (not all of you), it’s not about the individual cases per say, it’s about the trend and trying to explain away how so very MANY of these cases just keep showing up.
…I’m too afraid to actually post this ON youtube though… Those people are mean…
WithinThisMind
I’m afraid that, in the case of law enforcement agencies, there’s a lot of head up a great many ass. Police unions, too.
rq @ 118
Yeah, that was kind of my point. It’s an ongoing problem because the folks with the power to fix the problem are the folks who ARE the problem.
I’ve started reading the full DOJ report on Ferguson, having read the Atlantic’s short version.
Christ on a bike, but it’s scary: USA cops are out of control and no-one in law enforcement gives a shit. Month after month, year after year, they’re making a point of ignoring the issue and they know that USA citizens by a huge margin won’t argue. We complain over here in the UK about institutionally corrupt police forces (Met Police, for an obvious example), but what our cops do (mostly without the threat of summary execution) is tame in comparison to the institutionally-berserk and ungovernable-by-design cops in the USA.
#120:
One little correction with your statement though.
The cops were ALWAYS like this. Black and brown people have been complaining about this for decades. This isn’t new or happening more often. They are not suddenly out of control because that implies that they were ever in control. Its just that now, because of technology, everyone is getting a chance to see it up close.
Well, those who want to see it, anyway.