Did Sandra Bland commit suicide, or was she murdered in jail? Many cannot even entertain the possibility of the latter. While I’ve seen too many videos of police behaving inappropriately to outright dismiss the idea, I’ll assume Sandra did infact commit suicide for this blog.
Making that assumption, does it not still beg for justice for Sandra Bland? The question everyone needs to ask is should Sandra Bland have been in that jail cell three days after a minor traffic stop? More importantly, should she have ever been in jail in the first place? If Sandra Bland did commit suicide, would anyone debate that being wrongly stripped of her rights as an American citizen drove her to commit such a terrible act? At one point during the traffic stop, Sandra said “I can’t wait until we go to court”. This is not a statement of someone planning a suicide. Sandra in fact has just arrived in Texas to start a new job. Not exactly the mark of a suicidal person.
Did Sandra Bland have marijuana in her system? This is an irrelevant question that surfaced several days ago. If marijuana drove people to suicide, the suicide rates would be a lot higher than it already is in America! The wrong questions are being asked.
Ms. Bland reportedly admitted to a previous attempt at suicide on one section of official police paperwork. It was also reported that another section of the paperwork contradicted that information.
So let’s deal with the question at hand, should she have even been in jail? I am not a lawyer, and do not profess to know all of the laws regarding a traffic stop. If you look at the video at around the 9:00 minute mark, it appears that the officer arrested Ms. Bland for a failure to put out a cigarette. Again, I’m not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure that law is not on the books. The officer by his own admission was standing at the car door with a WARNING in his hand ready to be signed. The remainder of the interaction probably should have lasted another 30 seconds.
At the 8:37 mark of the video, the officer asks Ms.Bland “Are you ok?” The officer clearly knew Ms. Bland was irritated as he walked away from the car on his way to write the warning. The crime that Ms. Bland was arrested for had to have happened after the 8:37 mark. Where was the crime? In fact, why even ask Ms. Bland is she ok. The officer should have finished his job and handed her the warning and gave whatever verbiage he was responsible to give by giving the warning.
I believe the official report states that Ms. Bland threw and elbow at the officer. The elbow would have had to be thrown as the officer was reaching into the car attempting to arrest Ms. Bland. I believe we have a classic chicken and egg situation here. The reason for arrest actually came during the attempt to arrest. Mr. Officer, the law does not work that way.
If the arrest was illegal as it appears to have been, there has to be a coverup in some form. The official report has to have statements from the officer that contradict the facts from the dashcam. Simple question, what’s is the official reason for arrest? If there are lies in the report, the officer should be fired, period. Anyone involved in protecting those lies should be fired. We can talk about arrest later. We all make mistakes on our jobs, but if the arrest was illegal, let’s go with a “mistake”, then this officer cost a woman her life by making the most costly mistake ever. People have lost their jobs for far less.
So while everyone is caught up on if it was suicide, or if it was murder, the right questions can easily begin to gain some justice for Sarah Bland. Ultimately we need a definitive answer to the serious question, but let’s answer the basics first. Should Sarah Bland have been in that cell? I think most rational people would answer that question, no.
– the pragmatist
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Pragmatic Visions 