The Story of Sandra Bland

Xelebes

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Anyone else following this? Sandra Bland is. . .

A black woman who authorities say hanged herself in a Texas jail had posted an online video earlier this year saying she was suffering from "a little bit of depression," though family and friends say the 28-year-old gave no indication she was distraught enough to contemplate suicide.

As Sandra Bland's family and friends press for details of what happened, a prosecutor said Thursday that he will present the findings of a Texas Rangers' investigation to a grand jury. The FBI is also investigating the circumstances surrounding Bland's death.

Caught DWB:

Bland was pulled over Friday for improper signaling a lane change, according to Waller County Sheriff's Department officials.

. . .and charged for assaulting a public servant.

"After he pulled her out of the car, forced her and tossed her to the ground, knee to the neck, and arrested her," says her friend Malcom Jackson.

And the story is coming out by the state looking into the instance and uncovering what the camera tapes show.

Newly obtained video shows the arrest of 28-year-old Sandra Bland, a Naperville woman whose death at a Texas jail is being angrily questioned by her friends and relatives.

Sandra Bland was found dead in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell on Monday at 9 a.m. after being arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a routine traffic stop, the I-Team has learned. Authorities say her death appears to be suicide.

In numerous emails and phone calls to the ABC7 I-Team, her friends and relatives say they do not believe the official version of what happened and say this is a case of foul play in a county with a history racial intolerance.
 

backslashbaby

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Yeah, I'm following it :( In the tape that shows the last part of her arrest, she is complaining about her head being slammed to the ground and that she couldn't even hear.

The hanging supposedly happened an hour or two before she was getting bailed out and happened with a kitchen-sized trash bag.

She was loudly complaining of injuries in that first tape, and her relative says she also thought her arm was broken when she spoke with her on the phone, but the cops say she refused medical attention. I'm not so sure medical attention was offered, myself.
 

Mclesh

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I've been following this case too. I want to know what happened to this poor woman. How did being pulled over for not signalling a lane change (?!) end up in the jailhouse suicide of a woman reported to be excited about starting a new job? Things do not add up for me.
 

Don

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The rest of the story. She was apparently an activist, active in the #BlackLivesMatter campaign. Perhaps that explains her being pulled over for improperly signalling a lane change. It looks suspiciously like she was targeted.
Many of the people who dispute the account of Ms. Bland’s death say that she was a vocal civil rights advocate. In April, she posted a video to Facebook in which she discussed police brutality.


“Black lives matter,” Ms. Bland says to the camera. “They matter.”
 

DancingMaenid

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It's a very suspicious story. And it's disturbing that she apparently wasn't offered medical treatment for possible injuries, whether those injuries may have contributed to her death or not.

I feel terrible for her, and for her family. Nobody's life should come to an end after failing to use traffic signals properly. Even if she did kill herself for some reason (which again, does seem like a suspicious claim given the circumstances), it's easy to see how she would likely still be alive if she hadn't been arrested.
 

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Don't think for an instant this kind of story is really unusual. Here in the much lower population state of Alaska we currently have several pieces of litigation runnng concerning a number of wrongful deaths and wrongful injuries incurred by incarcerated inmates who were unsupervised/unmonitored/unprotected and/or deliberately placed by correctional officers in hazardous housing as a form of retribution. The highest-profile inmate in the past couple decades in the state, serial murderer Israel Keyes, was allowed to commit suicide in his cell in December 2013 when he was given a razor by a corrections officer in blatant violation of the rules in the high-security unit he was housed in. His death was discovered only hours later, despite the cell being drenched in blood. I believe investigations continue both in the U.S. and Canada concerning unsolved homicides that might be connected to this monster, and his death cut off any possibility of getting more information from him. That event, and the recently-sensational escape of the two murderers from the high-security prison in New York, vividly illustrate the level of incompetence that pervades many, probably most, of these punitive institutions.

The only thing unusual about the Bland case is that it has actually made news.

The U.S. incarcerates far more people than any other nation. Incarceration is a thriving industry here, and there's craploads of money involved, in ways that most people remain blissfully unaware of. And, in general, there exists no effective external oversight on the policies and procedures actually practiced by corrections officials and institutions. They are, in a real way, the modern equivalent of the medieval French oubliette, dungeons where offenders are locked up in to be forgotten.

When even the Koch brothers are publicly concerned about the state of offender "correction" in this nation, you gotta know something is really wrong.

caw
 
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Don

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When even the Koch brothers are publicly concerned about the state of offender "correction" in this nation, you gotta know something is really wrong.
Don't you mean "When even President Obama?" Because like it or not, the Koch brothers "have long urged revisiting how prosecutors bring cases, how defendants are represented and how sentences are decided, with the aim of making the system fairer."

To be fair, President Obama's the one who's late to this party.
When President Barack Obama praised conservatives Charles and David Koch for their efforts to overhaul the criminal-justice system, laughter rippled through the crowd Tuesday at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.


“No,” Mr. Obama said, “You’ve got to give them credit. You’ve got to call it like you see it.”
...
The improbable relationship traces back to a March summit focused on criminal justice.Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel of Koch Industries, who has led the company’s push on the subject, was speaking on a panel. Roy Austin Jr., a deputy assistant to the president who works on justice issues, was in the audience.
Nonetheless, congratulations to the president for finally stepping forward on an issue that's long been of critical importance to anti-authoritarians of all stripes.
 

nighttimer

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Don't think for an instant this kind of story is really unusual.

The only thing unusual about the Bland case is that it has actually made news.

You're so right. There is nothing unusual about the Sandra Bland case. The death of Sgt. James Brown, an active duty soldier who died in the El Paso county jail in 2012 didn't make news until a 2015 lawsuit made it make news.


Newly released video has revealed the dying moments of an African-American active-duty soldier who checked himself into the El Paso, Texas, county jail for a two-day sentence for driving under the influence, and died while in custody in 2012. Authorities claimed Sgt. James Brown died due to a pre-existing medical condition, but shocking new video from inside the jail raises new questions about what happened. The video shows guards swarming on top of him as he repeatedly says he can’t breathe and appears not to resist. By the end of the video, he is shown naked, not blinking or responding, his breathing shallow. Attorneys say an ambulance was never called. Brown was eventually brought to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His family had long suspected foul play in his death but received little information from authorities. They’ve now filed a lawsuit against El Paso County saying his constitutional rights were violated.

Don't think it just us Black folks, catching hell in the slamer. They got plenty of ass whuppings left over for you White folks too.

Someday this shit will end. It will be forced to end. I hope it doesn't end in violence, but I wonder if there's any way it won't.

blacbird said:
The U.S. incarcerates far more people than any other nation. Incarceration is a thriving industry here, and there's craploads of money involved, in ways that most people remain blissfully unaware of. And, in general, there exists no effective external oversight on the policies and procedures actually practiced by corrections officials and institutions. They are, in a real way, the modern equivalent of the medieval French oubliette, dungeons where offenders are locked up in to be forgotten.

When even the Koch brothers are publicly concerned about the state of offender "correction" in this nation, you gotta know something is really wrong.

caw

Don't you mean "When even President Obama?" Because like it or not, the Koch brothers "have long urged revisiting how prosecutors bring cases, how defendants are represented and how sentences are decided, with the aim of making the system fairer."

To be fair, President Obama's the one who's late to this party.

Nonetheless, congratulations to the president for finally stepping forward on an issue that's long been of critical importance to anti-authoritarians of all stripes.

I don't give a fuck about who's late to the party and who wants to gloss two greedy rich assholes who have spent the entire Obama years trying to undermine the nation's first Black president to protect their divine right to rape the environment and spread their poison across the world without regulation or restraint.

What I do give a fuck about is yet another Black women or man dying under unusual circumstances in police custody. I VERY MUCH CARE ABOUT THAT. Because it could be stopped for improperly making a lane change. Or speeding. Or driving while Black.

Or as my friend Jasmyne Cannick put it:
Today's Public Service Announcement:

Every now and then I have to make this clear and after ‪#‎SandyBland‬'s death I find it's even more imperative. I am not suicidal. I am not depressed enough to want to die. I don't do drugs. I barely drink alcohol. If I end up dead after a single car accident, please don't believe it. As a matter of fact, let's just say this. If I end up dead, no matter how much they may try to say I took my own life, it was a random shooting, she fell while hiking--DON'T BELIEVE IT. PLEASE DO ME JUSTICE AND DON'T FALL FOR THE OKEYDOKE

Official investigation? My ass. There will be a complete and through inquiry? Fuck that. We will pursue this no matter where it goes. You're full of shit.

Sometimes it feels like I'm told I should be afraid of terrorists coming to kill me in my sleep. I'm terrified of the police killing me while I'm awake.
 

backslashbaby

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That video of the girl, NT, is the kind of thing I always suspect, too. They just slam people's faces and heads around when it's unnecessary and vindictive. And with all of the broken face bones people definitely get, I suspect someone has to get a head injury that causes death from being slammed to the ground (or into a cell bench, etc).

I want to see an independent autopsy, and those results should help explain what on earth really happened.
 

LittlePinto

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That video of the girl, NT, is the kind of thing I always suspect, too. They just slam people's faces and heads around when it's unnecessary and vindictive. And with all of the broken face bones people definitely get, I suspect someone has to get a head injury that causes death from being slammed to the ground (or into a cell bench, etc).

I want to see an independent autopsy, and those results should help explain what on earth really happened.

Yeah, these guys need extensive training in the consequences of concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries. It looks like some of them follow the Hollywood Theory of Head Injuries: no matter how hard you get hit in the head, if it doesn't kill you then you'll be fine in a few minutes.
 

nighttimer

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American citizens should not walk into jails and be carried out dead. We can not and should not trust the local cops will do a fair, open and complete investigation. The U.S. Justice Department MUST step in and answer the question "What Happened to Sandra Bland?"
 

DancingMaenid

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It's hard to say right now what role (if any) this might have played in her death, but there are some particularly serious problems with how healthcare is managed in jails and prisons. When someone is in state/federal custody, they are reliant on the jail/prison to keep them healthy and alive. There's no excuse not to give people medications that they've been prescribed or get them medical attention if they show signs of illness or injury. Too many people have died because guards took for granted that a medical complaint wasn't serious or that the person was just faking it, and too many people do not get medications that they need to take. Healthcare is one thing that should never be trifled with.

Of course, that's not the only possibility of what happened to her. There are other alarming possibilities, too, such as a deliberate attack of some kind. At the very least, even if she did commit suicide, it appears there may have been some failure to follow protocol that could have contributed to what happened. But the state of health care in the correctional system has been bothering me a lot lately.
 

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When the BEST case scenario is incompetence, there's a serious problem.
 

Gilroy Cullen

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You know, this does bring up an interesting question:
IF she had a broken arm, as her family says, how the bloody hell did she manage to hang herself without someone hearing something? Trying to do that with one arm has got to make some noise.

I'm not old enough to remember a true "Beat Cop" walking neighborhoods and such, but I feel like the police lost a lot when they stopped that sort of presence. Difficulty now, because of the war on public officials, if they tried it, they'd have to be Iron Man just to get a few blocks.
 

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I'm (un)happy Sandra Bland made national news. More often, black women and TWOC are killed by police and don't become trendy hashtags. That she was a #blacklivesmatter activist might have more to do with the story's coverage than anything else. I can only hope enough folks jump on board to turn public opinion around in Texas. Doubtful. I know my state. Hashtags might prompt journalists to cover dead black bodies, but until policing is changed, until the justice system's coddling of police crimes are lifted, I see more dead brown and black bodies in America's future. To say otherwise is to ignore history.

It seems police officers have never had to answer for their actions until now. Only now is the white gaze scrutinizing them the same way minorities have been forced to. This is good, but it's only the start. I, for one, am very much aware of my small-town Texas police force. They did THIS to a 12yr old black girl in my city in 2006. That same officer was awarded best officer of the year just a few short months later. My town is corrupt. But it's not just my town, it's probably yours, too. Are you paying attention? Most likely, not.

I will continue to put pressure on my city officials. I know this might get me killed, but I'll be damned if I'm going to live in fear from the same police officers my tax dollars pay to protect my black ass. Fuck that.
 

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Now that I'm a bit less disgusted/pissed, I can consider the possibility that Sandra Bland could have committed suicide.

The Waller County Sheriff's Office said Bland took her own life and the death was ruled a suicide by the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. But her family and friends have publicly questioned the official account.

At a news conference on Monday, Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said there were "too many questions" to determine how she died.


"This is being treated like a murder investigation," Mathis said. He added that officials would examine fingerprints and run DNA tests on the plastic trash bag used in her hanging.


Bland's family has called for an independent autopsy and for the U.S. Justice Department to open an investigation, saying the young woman had moved to Texas from Chicago to start a new job and would not have taken her own life.


They also told Chicago local media that Bland, a black woman, was outspoken about allegations of bias and excessive force by U.S. law enforcement in a year that saw protests across the country following the killings of unarmed black men by white officers in New York, Missouri and South Carolina.


Last week, the FBI and Texas Rangers, a statewide police and investigation agency, said they were looking into Bland's case.


The Waller County Sheriff's Office on Monday released three hours of footage from the jail on the morning of her death, the Houston Chronicle reported. A female officer who apparently saw Bland hanging in her cell is seen in the footage running for help, the newspaper said.


Several officers administered CPR to try and revive her, the newspaper said, citing the sheriff's account.

Link

It's a horrible thing to say, but it might be better if it could be proven Bland took her own life. The thing is you'll never prove it to everyone's satisfaction.
 

robjvargas

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I will continue to put pressure on my city officials. I know this might get me killed, but I'll be damned if I'm going to live in fear from the same police officers my tax dollars pay to protect my black ass. Fuck that.
By all means, continue the pressure. However, there is real evidence that suicide was involved here. We should also make sure that this is a valid cause celebre.
 

nighttimer

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By all means, continue the pressure. However, there is real evidence that suicide was involved here. We should also make sure that this is a valid cause celebre.

What "real evidence" are you talking about?

Sandra Bland supposedly hung herself with a plastic bag. That must be a pretty strong Hefty bag to support the weight of a human being.

I'd like to see some proof Bland suffered from depression. Her family is convinced she was positive and upbeat about her life. A Facebook video of Bland talking about depression has been conflated into a reason for her death.

If it's speculative to say Sandra Bland was murdered in jail it's equally speculative to say she took her own life. Right now what we do know is outstripped by what we don't.
 

ElaineA

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A Texas...senator or whatever they're called in Texas...was interviewed on NPR and said the fact that the plastic bag was even in a jail cell was highly unusual. That fact struck me as odd as well. Clearly there is too little information to make sense of what is floating around. We can hope the dash-cam video sheds some light on the initial encounter, at least.

I really can't get over the strangeness of putting a person in jail for what started as about the least traffic violation possible. I don't really care if she was belligerent. Police deal with belligerent people every day. They're not all in jail. This one doesn't pass the sniff test to me.
 

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I really can't get over the strangeness of putting a person in jail for what started as about the least traffic violation possible. I don't really care if she was belligerent. Police deal with belligerent people every day. They're not all in jail. This one doesn't pass the sniff test to me.

She was an uppity black woman from Chicago who dared to mouth off to a cop for being an idiot.

Cause enough for them to smash her head into the pavement and drag her off to jail.

Bad cops?

Oh. Yeah.
 

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By all means, continue the pressure. However, there is real evidence that suicide was involved here. We should also make sure that this is a valid cause celebre.

What "real evidence" are you talking about?

Sandra Bland supposedly hung herself with a plastic bag. That must be a pretty strong Hefty bag to support the weight of a human being.

I'd like to see some proof Bland suffered from depression. Her family is convinced she was positive and upbeat about her life. A Facebook video of Bland talking about depression has been conflated into a reason for her death.

If it's speculative to say Sandra Bland was murdered in jail it's equally speculative to say she took her own life. Right now what we do know is outstripped by what we don't.

The Suicide is only part of the equation here.

We see the video, but don't know what led up to it. Was there cause to even arrest her? If she was disrespectful to the cop, yelled, called him names, that's not assaulting an officer. Did she lay hands on the cop? Is there any footage of the beginning? Even dashboard cam?

Then there's whatever happened once in custody. Which, unless the autopsy shows something, might be harder to prove.

You could have a legit arrest, then murder once in custody. A bad arrest and a suicide. Or both be legit or both be bad.
 

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By all means, continue the pressure. However, there is real evidence that suicide was involved here. We should also make sure that this is a valid cause celebre.

I don't know that 'real evidence' will come out until different investigators tell us what it is. Even the video tape may have been edited, frankly. It's motion activated, so time gaps can be called that. People looking in the little window doesn't mean they don't already know something happened, etc.

Apparently most of that is actually being checked out pretty early this time, so the pressure is important. They are even going to fingerprint the bag :)

There's no way to know if these things are shady until proper investigations take place. A cause celebre might turn out to be nothing shady, but then that's a kind of good news. I certainly won't feel bad about my early suspicions if the cops were fine, because in the US right now in cases like this, it really is suspicious. Hopefully that will help prevent bad things from happening in the future, too, for them to know they are being watched and investigated seriously.