So you think he arrested her for refusing to get out of the car?
Because I think he was ordering her out of the car to arrest her. And I think what prompted him to arrest her was her refusal to comply with his request to extinguish her cigarette. I think he used that as an excuse to effect an arrest.
I base that on the particular points in time where the officer’s demeanor and attitude changed and how it changed.
Do you disagree?
I think I can answer that question: If you are not actively cooperating, you are resisting.
Once again, the charge that she was arraigned for was assault on the officer.
Speculation with no basis in reality.
Do you think that simply saying an order is lawful makes it so?
If so, I lawfully order you to sign all your assetts (but not your debts) over to me; you have to do it, I’m a cop.
Analogies are never precise: if they were, they’d be the same thing. The fact that you can find a different is irrelevant, unless it’s a relevant difference.
Legality be damned. If it were legal to spike a woman’s drink to make her fall asleep so you could rape her, it’d still be a shitty thing to do, and someone who spent all their time blaming the rape victim instead of the rapist would be acting atrociously. That’s the relevant part of the analogy.
But if you want a different analogy, when I was growing up a man could take sex from his wife at any point; “spousal rape” was legally an oxymoron. A woman who spoke harshly to her husband could be forced to have sex with him against her will. And if a woman spoke harshly to her husband and was raped, and you spent all your energy telling her how she shouldn’t have spoken to him that way, I’d think the same thing of your argument as I think of the arguments folks are making here about Bland.
I figured you would see it but thought it was funny anyway.
I think that this all sort of happened. I don’t think he went into this encounter thinking ‘I really want to have a confrontation with a black woman today and arrest her ass so that the video on my dash cam can go viral’. My WAG is that he was going to let her off with a warning, she annoyed him, he pushed her on the stupid cigarette thing and then decided to make her hop by asking her to leave the car, when she refused he went ballistic and blew up.
I think had she just taken the ticket (or initial warning) with any sort of civil attitude she would have simply driven off. Had she left the car I think she would have been harassed but probably let go after the cop vented his spleen by making her dance. Is this right or fair? No, probably not. And no doubt this guy is going to pay for his actions…and Sandra paid with her life, whether she took her own life because of depression and the situation or whether there was something else going on there.
No. Having the order be lawful makes it so. He tells it to her so that she cannot claim she didn’t know. Failure to obey a lawful order from a policeman is a crime in Texas (I cited the law upthread).
I could reply with that phrase to nearly all of your posts on the Straight Dope and it would be more accurate than when you posted it just now.
When precisely is Bland technically arrested?
“He obviously doesn’t like her attitude and uses unnecessary force is what DPS is saying, that he, you know, violated protocol in that stop.”
Emphasis mine
Department protocols are required to be written under Administrative Rules, Administrative Rules are required to be written under State Law. Yes, that means protocols carry the weight of law … as anyone knows who have used “It’s just a rule, not a law” defense in court.
I presume when the officer tells her she’s under arrest. After she refuses to leave the car and before she exits it. As in:
TROOPER: “Get out!” (reaching into the car)
BLAND: “Don’t touch me!”
TROOPER: “Get out of the car!”
BLAND: “Don’t touch me. I am not under arrest. You don’t have the right to touch me.”
TROOPER: “You are under arrest.”
You don’t have the lawful authority to do so, even if you were a cop. You can threaten me with a gun in which case I’ll do exactly what you say (just like I would any thief or robber), but you don’t have the authority to do so. I really don’t see the point of this line of debate…this guy DID have the authority to require (not request) the driver to exit the vehicle. Simply saying it was within his authority. Building hypothetical situations where the police don’t have the authority to do something really says nothing interesting about THIS case.
Hell, the cop’s actions had no basis in reality.
Concerning the suicide, I wonder if she was on meds for her depression. If so, did she have her medication while in jail? I know stopping your meds can sometimes plunge someone into a super dark depression. Her suicide is such a shocking outcome, I can’t help but wonder why (although human behavior isn’t always rational, especially in jail).
There are far more than two sides, if that’s the difference you want to focus on. I, for example, think she was legally obligated to follow the “exit the car” order, but think that, far more importantly, cops shouldn’t give lawful orders if they’re not necessary. In this case, no public safety goal was served by any of the cop’s conversation with her after he’d issued the warning (indeed, the warning itself really didn’t serve a public safety goal, nor did the stop itself). Whether the cop’s orders were legal, let’s set that aside for a second: he SHOULD NOT have asked her to extinguish her cigarette or to step out of the car, because doing so did not serve any purpose.
[QUOTE=cmyk]
Hell, the cop’s actions had no basis in reality.
[/QUOTE]
Well, it was real enough…a lady died in this cluster fuck after all. He had the right to ask her to leave and the authority to arrest her when she refused…doesn’t get much more real that that, especially when someone dies as a result.
I haven’t heard anything about meds that she might have been on, but I agree if she was on them and didn’t have access that could certainly have been a key reason for what happened. I don’t know if the cops were aware of her medical needs, assuming she had them…if they WERE, and they did nothing (including put her on a suicide watch in case) then they are going to get hammered even more on this than they already are.
Excellent point, Terr! The legality of the arrest is the only issue of any significance, the justice, civility or humanity are trivial matters that can be brushed aside. And let it be noted that he only drew his taser, merely offering her intense pain. He did not reach for his service weapon, despite the threat from second hand smoke.
And, in a display of modesty, he demands that she not use her phone to record events, as he is unwilling to be the focus of the plaudits and kudos that will certainly result from such a recording of his sterling and excruciatingly correct behavior.
Well said.
Also, I believe she became frightened at that moment. Adrenalin and fight or flight kicks in for her, he’s on some irrational power trip, and it all goes pear shaped.
Yeah, I agree with this…I think that the cop should have had better control of the situation and himself and that he shouldn’t have gone nuclear. I also agree that there didn’t seem to be a valid reason to ask her to leave the car, even if he had the authority to do so. Being angry or pissed off at someone isn’t a reason to make them hop. But that whether he should or shouldn’t have done this, she should have followed his instructions and left the car when told to do so and not tried to be a lawyer or argue the point. Get out of the vehicle, take the ticket, follow instructions and then drive away…THEN call your lawyer and fight it in court.
Starting a new job, phone calls to her family and a friend indicated a coherent, albeit defiant Sandra. Not someone who would be despondent or depressed. However, the Sheriff’s department was quick to use her facebook admission of depression and release documents that want us to believe she was suicidal. Except the paperwork at the time of her arrest is inconsistent, and the “depression” was a result of a miscarriage earlier this year. There is no evidence of chronic depression, or even a diagnosis of it.
My worry is she succumbed to her injuries that were left untreated or she suffered a seizure as she suffered from epilepsy, or a combination of the two.
I agree that LHOD summarized it nicely. It’s amazing how rightwingers become such huge believers in absolute power of the smallest government agents when it means unnecessarily punishing black wrongdoers.