My, but you love you some specificity! You may not even be aware how often you issue challenges centered around “specific”. An unkind or ungenerous observer might gather the impression that you are looking for a nitpick, a small point that you can stand upon and demand respect for.
Can Constitutionality sanctify injustice, can a citation of case law transform a pig’s ear to a silk purse? Are we expected to breathe a sigh of relief, saying “Yes, this is an appalling abuse of power by a sworn public servant, but thank Heavens… Its legal!”
Yes, to be sure, Ms Bland’s behavior falls short, but here’s the thing: she never swore to be better than us, she did not take an oath to protect and serve, she was not entrusted with lethal force upon her assertion that she was worthy of such trust. She is not sworn to protect me from injustice at the hand of power any more than I am sworn to protect her, we are precisely equal in our common and collective commitment to justice.
There are no such things as human rights, we made it all up, it is a gift we fashion from nothing and give to each other. They are not the gift of God, a force that may exist in the abstract, but the Ear does not listen and the Hand does not manifest. They are ours, and ours alone, we are the source and the shelter. God will not protect our rights if we don’t resist their debasement.
Perhaps if you had been in the car with her as her trusted confidant and adviser, all of this wretchedness might have been avoided. Almost certainly so, I have little doubt you would have rushed to her aid. But as your experience as a public defender must have taught you, the people who most need a lawyer are those who cannot afford one.
Remember how she told the officer that she was calling her lawyer? I’ve got a nickel to bet says she didn’t have one, she was bluffing, like a finger in a coat pocket claimed to be a gun. Having a lawyer means you have money, you have power. Had it been you she called, I haven’t the least doubt you would have been down to that police station in a heartbeat, and all of this would be nothing more than a trivial happenstance quickly set right, or as close to right as we were likely to get. She would be alive, because she would have been proven to be a significant person, someone not to be ignored. Alas.
Forgive, if you can, our lack of legalistic sophistication, we are but the common clay. She is dead, he may lose his job, the law is satisfied, but we are not. Prove me wrong on some minor procedural point, and I gain a smidgeon of information. What you get out of it, I don’t hazard to guess.