“I’ve never had that talk with my girls”; plus Sandra Bland dashcam video news
by Gaius Publius
Digby covered this story here, but there’s much more from other sources. This is literally heart-wrenching. Shaun King writing at Daily Kos:
How the assault, arrest, and death of Sandra Bland changes everything for me
I live in a house with six black girls and women. I have four daughters, ranging from the ages of 2 to 15 years old. My wife, Rai, is my high school sweetheart and we’ve been inseparable since 1995. My 60-year-old mother-in-law, a Pentecostal minister, lives with us as well. Outside of our only son, most of our house, and most of my life, revolves around loving, caring, learning from, providing for, and protecting these six black women. They are everything to me.
I made a mistake though.
I drastically underestimated the very real and present threat police present to black women in America. As a journalist, as a leader, and as a husband and father, I’ve gone to great lengths to communicate the disproportionate threat of brutality that black men face at the hands of law enforcement. If you live in my house, the names Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice—each unarmed black boys and men who were killed in fatal encounters with police—are deeply familiar, almost like slain family members. We talk about their cases and the pain facing their families at our dinner table. Last week I would’ve told you this with a sense of pride. Now, though, not so much.
About a week ago, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from Chicago had just accepted a new job at Prairie View A&M University, about an hour outside of Houston, Texas, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in agriculture. Leaving the campus on the afternoon of Friday, June 10, everything about her world would soon come crumbling down.
Officer Brian Encinia, a white officer with five years of experience for the Texas State Police, can be seen on recently released dashcam footage roaring full speed behind Bland to catch up to her slow-driving Hyundai. As many of us have been trained to do, she moved her car, as courtesy, to the right lane to allow the speeding officer to pass her by. We don’t just see this, Bland herself, on this same footage, can be heard later communicating to the officer that she indeed changed lanes because she noticed his fast-approaching patrol car behind her. The officer, though, saw a technicality. In getting over to the next lane for him, Bland failed to use her turn signal. He put on his flashing lights, Bland pulled over, and we now know that she lived only three more days. This encounter was the beginning of her end.
This is where my mistake comes into play. Black families often speak of “the talk” we have to have with our sons about just how dangerous a simple encounter with police can quickly become. I’ve never had that talk with my girls. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it was necessary. I was wrong. It is painfully and urgently necessary. Officer Brian Encinia, who has been suspended from active duty by the Texas Department of Public Safety for multiple violations of state policies during his arrest of Sandra Bland, has made it such that I will now have “the talk” with my girls as well.
In the video, Officer Encinia notices that Bland is visibly frustrated for being pulled over. In what first appeared to be a courtesy, but soon showed itself to be a ruse, he asked her the cause of her frustrations. It otherwise appears she had no intentions of communicating her feelings to the officer. Almost as soon as she begins to express herself, Officer Encinia, overstepping his authority in a show of power, asks Bland to put out her cigarette.
Bland, though, knows her rights, and communicates to the officer that she is fully and completely allowed to smoke in her car. She was right. It was downhill from there. Officer Encinia first asks, then demands that Sandra Bland get out of her car. He then forcefully attempts to make her get out of the car. She refuses. On 14 different occasions, Bland asks Officer Encinia what she was being arrested for, but he gives no answers. He then pulls out his Taser and tells Bland, “I’ll light you up,” if she doesn’t get out of the car. This is another abuse of his power.
“I’ll light you up.” In some districts, I’m completely convinced, attitudes like these are a plus at the officer candidate interview. And by “like this” I mean, explicitly:
- Interest in torture
- Hatred of blacks
- Pathological need for control
Quote me. I know therapists who treat the families of police officers. They attest to the third point. The first two have been amply and publicly demonstrated.
More from Mr. King:
Arrested for assaulting an officer, which did not appear on any
either video we have from the day, Bland would communicate to the bail
bondsman that she feared for her life in the jail and wanted to get out
immediately.On Monday, July 13, on the day she was scheduled to be released, Bland left the jail, dead.
Another day, another cop letting his own freak flag fly — not to mention his friends at the station who may have joined right in.
Was the Sandra Bland DashCam Video Edited?
Answer: Very possibly yes.
Rather than quote the source, I’m going to send you to dKos diarist Patience John who’s done some interesting work. While the audio appears to by only somewhat interrupted, the video clearly loops. Oddly (or not), the same cars keep driving by in a section that starts about 32 minutes into the video.
I do want to quote this observation though:
Waller County is also home to Prairie View A&M,
one of the oldest traditionally black universities. This could have
been any of the many young black youths and young men and women in the
area.
Click, read and watch. More from Ben Morton, who finds other discrepancies:
Yet more from Yesha Callahan at TheRoot:
Hat tip to radio host Angie Coiro via email for each of the last two links.
This could be major. It also could well blow up.
Late news: Looks like the maybe-edited dashcam video has been rereleased in a shorter, less glitchy version. This second version appears less edited, or unedited, or (dare we say it) reedited to appear unedited. ABC News:
Texas police have released a second version of the dashboard-camera footage of Sandra Bland‘s traffic stop and ensuing arrest.
The footage was recorded on the dashcam of a highway trooper who pulled Bland over July 10 and shows their interaction as it escalates from a verbal exchange to a physical one.
Bland’s arrest is being scrutinized in light of her death in a jail cell three days later.
The Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin first released a 52-minute version of the footage Tuesday night via YouTube, but viewers quickly noticed video anomalies. Some viewers lashed out on social media, claiming the tape had been edited, though a department spokesman denied any edits had been made in a statement released this morning.
The new version of the video, which is just over 49 minutes long, was just released and does not have any of the visual anomalies that were noted in the first version.
So what should we believe? That the original released recording was raw, unedited and had “uploading errors” — or was edited (badly) to make the traffic stop look somehow better? That the second released recording was even more raw and even more unedited — or that the edited first version was somehow cleaned up for this release? We really do need answers to these questions, as well as to the cause of death itself.
This is being treated as a murder investigation. That department has a history of problems related to African-Americans (see link). So far, there’s no released autopsy report that I’m aware of, just the medical examiner’s initial ruling of suicide. Has the body been released to the family? No idea, but I’m not seeing a report of it.
We’ll have to see how it goes. To me, this still looks like it could well blow up.
GP
.