Here we go again. Another acquittal, another riot.

I don't think Ms Bland's death can be directly attributed to Officer Turd's actions at the traffic stop, but... why shouldn't that asshole be on a path towards prison for what he did do to her?

Imagine this scenario: A woman who changed lanes in front of me is sitting in her car smoking a cigarette and acting irritable. I tell her she seems irritable, and in an irritable tone of voice she says she is. I order her to put out her cigarette because... I don't know, maybe I don't like people smoking in their cars within ten feet of me... and she refuses. So I tell her to get out of the car or I'll drag her out, and she refuses. So I'm all like "what the fuck, who does she think she is!" and I open her car door and attempt to drag her out, but she's too hard to get out. So I threaten her with a weapon that's capable of inflicting severe pain, possibly even serious injury or death, and she submits while giving me shit and calling me a pussy. I put my hands on her and begin restraining her arms, with the intent of forcing her into my car and taking her somewhere else.

I would think that anything she did to me in that scenario, up to and including beating me to death, would be justifiable self defense, and anything I did to her would be a serious felony. I don't think it would take a lengthy, complicated investigation to figure that out, especially if I was stupid enough to do it in front of a video camera. But it would definitely take a lot of time, money and complicated effort for me and my lawyers to figure out how to cover up or justify it. And that's what all the government paid pettifoggers are saying it's going to take in the case of Officer Turd's assault on Ms Bland.

She was charged with assaulting a public servant, for allegedly kicking Officer Turd sometime after he assaulted her in her car, threatened her with a weapon and handcuffed her. The only crime I could see on that video was Officer Turd threatening, assaulting and kidnapping her.

Her actual offense, of course, was the inexcusable insult of failing to grovel sufficiently in the presence of her superior. Governments, law enforcement agencies, internal affairs investigators and district attorneys could save a lot of time, money and work if they would just pass a law that explicitly requires commoners to grovel in the manner that satisfies them.

Her actual offense, of course, was the inexcusable insult of failing to grovel sufficiently in the presence of her superior.

Exactly.

And this woman was in jail for THREE DAYS for failing to grovel properly. Put in a cage.

More in this Vox story, including a bit quoting a Radley Balko's reporting on why people held on minor charges may commit suicide in jail.

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/9002747/sandra-bland-arrest-video

Balko talked to Lindsay Hayes, project director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, to find out:

The mere trauma of sitting in a jail cell can be overwhelming, and this is particularly true for someone who has never been in one before. And that could explain the suicides by people who aren't facing serious charges.

"That it was an arrest for a minor crime may not matter. In fact a sense of injustice can only add to the emotional damage. Someone may be sitting in a cell for longer than they were supposed to be. So the walls start closing in. There's the uncertainty, of not knowing when you're going to get out. There's the loss of control. You're cut off from family and friends. And it's all beyond your control. That can be really difficult, especially for someone who hasn't experienced it before."

Public execution of the cop w/in the next 3 days or start w/the Mayor and work your way down.

3 days. 3 days. I think I would still start w/the Mayor and work my way down. New hobby. Do each one different.

Ken R rightly separates the fact of Ms Bland's death from the circumstances of the initial stop. This focusses attention on where it should be, which is just how badly it was handled by the officer.

But he's only responding to incentives, which are

- training which has taught him to aggressively and continuously seek to take total command of any situation and react to any resistance, no matter how trivial, by escalating

- a complete lack of any meaningful consequences for doing so

and

- an insane culture of worst-first thinking and movie-plot melodrama, in which every trivial traffic stop is treated as a high-risk felony apprehension. Sure, there is a chance that a traffic stop will escalate into a deadly firefight - but that chance is vanishingly, incredibly, infinitesimally-tiny. Yet those incredibly-rare instances are used as justification for treating all citizens this way, all the time - and we put up with it.

I fully-expect that some police-union apparatchik or lawyer will come out and cite some instance where an officer was burned by a citizen's cigarette, and therefore, in the interests of 'officer safety', it somehow creates a situation in which he can tell her to put out her cigarette, and this somehow becomes a 'lawful order', and he is justified in dragging her out of the car, arresting her and carting her off to jail for 'failure to comply.'

The only way to change this mindset and change this approach is to change the rules which encourage and reward officers for behaving this way.

A good start might be this - any traffic stop for a purely civil violation - speeding, failure to signal, whatever - cannot be expanded beyond the limits of that stop. So if you are pulled over for a traffic violation, all the officer can do is issue you a citation for that violation. Nothing Else. Nothing. If you refuse to accept it, or smoke a cigarette, or cuss out the officer, or drive away - Too Bad. This whole rigamarole of Pulling You Over, and Asking About Your Record, and the stylized walk Back to The Cruiser, and all the rest of it, is all horse-puckey anyway - it has nothing to do with traffic enforcement or safety, 99 traffic stops out of 100 are pretextual, the reasons ranging from wanting to look in your trunk on a 'hunch' to trying to get a date.

There will be howls of outrage. Don't care.

"People will be able to just drive away from a traffic stop!" Don't care. Find other ways to cite them for trivial civil infractions. Most meaningful traffic violations - the things that are actually-dangerous, as-opposed to merely generating revenue - can be cited by completely-automated means anyway. Think red-light cameras.

Police will complain that 'We'll lose one of our most effective tools for catching criminals!' Don't care. Too bad. You screwed it up by using it as an excuse to abuse and terrorize citizens. Find other ways to catch criminals. It's what we pay you for.

(Incidentally, the number of 'real' criminals' caught by simple traffic stops is likewise vanishingly-rare. Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh notwithstanding.)

Once the incentives and opportunities for harassing citizen and escalating trivial matters into beatings and Taserings and arrests are removed, officers will stop doing them, and eventually forget that they ever did. The police saying is 'you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride', and the process is used and abused to apply non-judicial punishment on citizens, at the mere whim of the officer, for behaviors which are not illegal. Once you take away the officer's ability to punish you with 'the ride', you take away his ability to behave in the ghastly ways seen in this video.

llater,

llamas

Oh, any by the way - where's the dashcam video of the alleged violation? The officer's car has a dashcam, and it was working - where's the evidence of the violation that precipitated all of this?

I thought so.

That's another new llamas rule - if there isn't dashcam video of an alleged traffic violation - there's no grounds for a citation. The technology is there, and the public is clamoring for it to be used.

Same with this alleged 'assault on a police officer'. Is there a hospital record of alleged injuries? Video? No? Then, no case. If I allege that an officer has assaulted me for no reason, and the officer denies it, and there is no discernible injury or evidence, then there is no case. Turnabout is fair play, and this culture of accepting an officer's word that there was some vague assault at some unspecified time and for which there is no evidence, similarly has to stop. It's just another excuse, along with things like 'interfering with an officer' or 'obstructing governmental administration', that's used as justification for imposing 'the ride'.

llater,

llamas

Public execution of the cop w/in the next 3 days

That's a little extreme, Bob.

A good horse whipping, on the other hand...or if that's too much, then: tar, feathers, some assembly required.

llamas nailed it in one (two?).

I would also add no 'hot' pursuit. Let the criminal go. You got the car. You got pictures of the criminal. Put out a reward and just open the doors.

What are the stats that indicate the danger to the public of a high speed pursuit is worth a typical driving w/o license, insurance, outstanding warrant for a drug offense.

Which action puts me and mine at risk?

So you can see why SJWs have such an influence: broken justice system which cannot provide individual justice.

What bother's me most is that she is not allowed to do the things that she needs to be able to do to protect herself. I notice that she is not allowed to videotape on her phone and then all of the "action" occurs out of sight of the dash cam. She also asked to call her lawyer. If she had been able to do those things, the entire incident would have de-escalated.

I was stopped by a cop for no reason and it was truly frightening. As he kept questioning me, I became more fearful that he intended to rape me - and he never even touched me. I can only imagine the fear in the wake of all the violence and murder of African Americans in police custody how fearful this lady must have been.

The advice I would have for police is to be more patient and the advice I would have for people being stopped is to just shut up and comply and sort it out later in court.

"So you can see why SJWs have such an influence: broken justice system which cannot provide individual justice."

Disagree Stinky. SJWs only have influence w/those that do not take up the fight on their own.

They let the gov't take care of 'em in every way, do not get involved w/their community, do not vote or attend community meetings, do not go against their "leaders", do not DEMAND that things go right.

They let the SJWs and their "leaders" tell them what they need/want.

Things boil over and that's the only good thing about the protests going on now. AT LAST they are saying "THIS IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG!"

About damn time. Just hope they keep it to the point and don't let the Sharptons' make it about something else.

I R A,

It's extreme if this is an unusual behavior for him. If not, then why let him get a job in this or a similar position somewhere else. I'm not going to follow him around for the rest of his life making sure he does not do this stuff for a living.

She got irritated 'cause she moved over out of his way (no blinky) and gets pulled over. Once he knows that he escalates the incident!

He takes her in and later once he cools off does not initiate her release from jail (he's equally at fault for making a mountain out of a molehill).

3 days. 3 days. If a driver of a get-a-way car can be charged w/murder because his dumb-ass partner shoots someone then yup this guy goes down as well.

Send a message to these clowns and their bosses. Be straight up or get out.

This is serious work w/serious consequences for people. At a minimum loss of pay, loss of job due to missed time/arrest, cost of attorney, cost of car towing/parking. Loss of life. For no blinky!

But, at least as far as the cops were concerned, the over-riding issue was "the officer went home safe at the end of the shift".

Not "to protect and serve".

Not "to uphold the law".

And, methinks, that's where we need to start in all this. . .

The mere trauma of sitting in a jail cell can be overwhelming, and this is particularly true for someone who has never been in one before.

Two people close to me have been thrown in a cell under BS circumstances. You don't really have an accurate way of tracking the time, you're lucky if you get food and water, and every time you ask a question, the guard looks at you like you're scum and walks right on by. They laugh at you when you ask to make a phone call and say the "one phone call" thing is from the movies, but they'll let you make a call "in a minute" -- and then they never do. One of my friends in this situation had already had his head slammed into a brick wall by a cop and was terrified of even speaking out from his cell, lest he be killed with another head slam.

For someone not used to this treatment (and who is?) it's terrifying. Both people said they seriously considered harming themselves to get attention within a few hours. They couldn't fathom what they'd have done after 3 days.

Both of them said that, while sitting in their cells, they thought of that student who nearly died in a DEA facility after being left without food for 5 days. And how they could totally see that happening to them.

The above video has been edited to make it appear the officer became argumentative at the 2:00 minute mark. Here is another video from local news reports showing the arguments began at the 9:00 minute mark. After the stop and for 9 minutes, the stop was routine and courteous. Bland was told she would be given a warning only, not a citation that would normally result in fines. She had only to sign the warning slip and she would be free to go. Instead, she picked a fight with the cop. Regrettably, the rest is history.

http://news.yahoo.com/da-too-early-know-woman-died-texas-jail-071406087.html#

Practical advice for all: If you are fact-to-face with a cop, do what he says. If you pick a fight, and you find the cop getting mad at you, apologize quickly to diffuse the situation. Your goal is to stay alive and out of jail. If the cop exceeds his authority, that's what courts are for.

This is a bit more nasty than being groped at the airport. Let us find and post this officer's name!

After all, this is what body-camera advocates insist - that police will be forced to act more civilly.

"So you can see why SJWs have such an influence: broken justice system which cannot provide individual justice."

The irony of that being, of course, that individual justice is the very last thing the SJW's want.

@ Nick - you see, I watch that same video, and I don't see/hear Ms Bland picking a fight. I see/hear her expressing her disagreement at the officer's pointless and officious instruction to put out her cigarette, and then the officer is the one who picks a fight with her.

She was being perfectly compliant - if displeased - with the process of getting a ticket. It was the officer, with his schoolmarmy 'put out that cigarette' that escalated the encounter. A more-cynical person than I would think that he did this deliberately - pushed her buttons to see if he could provoke a reaction that would give him some cause with which to give her 'the ride'.

Police officers are supposed to be able to deal with merely-unhappy people - who are, after all, their daily lot - without resorting to threats of violence, followed by actual violence. If this officer is such a delicate snowflake that the prospect of a citizen refusing to immediately and meekly comply with some BS instruction he cares to throw out reduces him yelling threats - maybe he needs to find a different line of work. Only a fool or a sociopath goes around manufacturing conflict.

Now, let's be clear - under the USSC doctrine of Mimms (which I think is deeply flawed, but so sayeth the Soopremes) he has the authority to order her to exit her vehicle, and then conduct a weapons patdown under the doctrine of Terry. And he can use her argumentative responses to his unenforceable/illegitimate instructions ('put out that cigarette') as partial justification for doing one or both of those things. She became argumentative/combative, Your Honor, and for my own safety, I decided . . . . . . But it's a pretty chickensh*t officer who deliberately goes looking for trouble like this. She's smoking a cigarette while you're writing her a ticket, and you tell her to stop, and she doesn't? Get over yourself. If you're just PO'd that she doesn't immediately, meekly do whatever you tell her, you need to grow up. And if you then decide to act on your PO'd-ness and escalate the issue in order to 'punish' her, you're a thug and a tyrant. Because you're no longer enforcing the law or protecting the public - you're playing out your own personal revenge fantasy. How sick is that?

llater,

llamas

I remember when cops were much nicer. I wonder if it was because we treated them nicer.

I remember when cops were much nicer. I wonder if it was because we treated them nicer. ~ Posted by: Dave B at July 22, 2015 12:11 PM

That was back when they were actually police and not tax revenue collectors for a voracious legislature.

The public will start respecting the police when the legislature starts respecting the police.

One of the resentments that sparked the Ferguson riots was frustration over constantly rising fees for minor infractions and long waits in court to pay or challenge those fees. Working poor people cannot take a day off work to contest a $300 fine. They lose $300 to try and avoid paying $300. Cpps were the imposers of those fees and the public face of a faceless bureaucracy that did nothing but treat the public like an ATM.

She asks the cop 14 times why she's being busted without getting a straight answer?

"That was back when they were actually police and not tax revenue collectors for a voracious legislature.

The public will start respecting the police when the legislature starts respecting the police."

So attacking the police is probably not the solution to the problem.

Gog will be so disappointed if that is true.

Gog: "She asks the cop 14 times why she's being busted without getting a straight answer?"

He couldn't tell her why he was arresting her because he didn't know why yet. He ended up arresting her for assaulting a public servant, because she allegedly kicked him - which didn't happen until sometime after he decided to arrest her and had her in handcuffs.

The real reason he was arresting her was failure to grovel sufficiently, which of course he couldn't say.

So attacking the police is probably not the solution to the problem.

Probably not.

Practical advice for all: If you are fact-to-face with a cop, do what he says.

Well Nick, what can I say but I hope the next cop that pulls you over orders you to fuck his dog.

lujlp, don't give the cops any ideas.

No one seems to remember it anymore, but there was a case back in 1981 right here in Southern California that I believe had some interesting parallels.

In 1981, a young African-American star athlete from Cal State Long Beach, Ron Settles, got pulled over in Signal Hill, as I recall for something minor. Anyway, not long after, he was found hanged in his jail cell.

Again, I could be wrong but to this day, I don't think what really happened to Settles has ever actually been determined.

"So attacking the police is probably not the solution to the problem.

Gog will be so disappointed if that is true."

Sorry for the late reply, I was busy ax-murdering the children of some homeless diabetic blind amputee police officers and I had to stop on the way home to punch out a nun.

If you pick a fight

I sure don't hear her picking a fight, either.

And perhaps because she's a woman and I'm one, too, I identify with her. But I think it's more because she's a woman who -- rightfully -- questioned a cop's bullying treatment, and I believe in standing up for what's right (and do).

I admire her for not kowtowing and I admire her spirit, as I could hear it in the video. Tragic that this woman is dead.

Sandra Bland voicemail for friend: "How did switching lanes with no signal turn into all of this, I don’t even know."

http://abc13.com/news/voicemail-from-sandra-bland/872791/

Sorry for the late reply, I was busy ax-murdering the children of some homeless diabetic blind amputee police officers and I had to stop on the way home to punch out a nun. ~ Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 22, 2015 6:22 PM

I think the nun thing is okay. After all she's Roman Catholic and it's pretty much open season on them. In fact, I'm not even sure punching a nun is a crime anymore.

===================================

...an insane culture of worst-first thinking and movie-plot melodrama, in which every trivial traffic stop is treated as a high-risk felony apprehension. Sure, there is a chance that a traffic stop will escalate into a deadly firefight - but that chance is vanishingly, incredibly, infinitesimally-tiny.

I agree that the chances of violence in a traffic stop are small, but they are there. Just ask Scott Lunger. Oh, wait, you can't.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Person-Hospitalized-After-Reports-of-Alleged-Officer-Involved-Shooting-in-Hayward-318111931.html

Conan,
Do you really think the cop was in fear of his life from her smoking a cig inside her car?

Luger's fate was statistically small BUT it is a possibility.

So why did the cop increase the tension level w/her? Door #1 says it was because it was he knew knew he could get away with it.

A smart cop by himself thinking she might might shoot if pressed would have let her go until he had backup. (I mean WHERE is she going to go that he and bunch of others could not find her.)

A dumbass cop presses the issue because HE'S A COP! He's the biggest and baddest thing in the UNIVERSE!

(Read a little bit about hunting water buffalo. Smart. Pissed off just because. Loves to ambush the hunter. Hunter sends in bait (porter) w/instructions to drop like a rock so he can shoot the thing several times quickly.)

Jeez this cop was stupid and a shining example of why people hate small-town cops. He was never in danger. Never. She had to comply or kill him. Very very few do that.

"In fact, I'm not even sure punching a nun is a crime anymore."

To be honest, I didn't know she was a nun until later.

I honestly thought I was beating up a penguin with a real holier-than-thou attitude.