Ok - but she called her sister and the bondsman who called her mother, as well. All on Saturday. The bondsman works 24/7. Waller County Sheriff’s office told Slate that “they could have processed Bland’s bail at any time Saturday or Sunday”.
I think that he can be heard floating various “ways” to describe it on the tape. He is consulting his rulebook and positing whether the stop itself was an “arrest”. I don’t know why he wouldn’t know if it was. He was caught up in the moment, but it is telling that he was trying to rationalize with the other cop what happened so that the story would be consistent. He knew he really screwed up.
BTW Dr.s are paid a lot because of the medical training. Police are paid less. They both have to have rules and use sense as part of their minimum requirement to provide the services that they perform.
I can only speculate (as you are). I remember reading something else about her phone conversations with her sister, but I can’t find it now.
It’s possible they were waiting on this friend who was expected to show up any minute. Maybe they couldn’t spare even $500.00 (apparently Bland didn’t have it either), and were trying to get it together. I don’t know their finances.
I know it’s unbelievable to you, but there are people who don’t have a spare $500.00, or enough credit to borrow it.
I’ve been so poor that $500.00 would have been impossible to raise. Why is that not a possibility?
This is not one person. This is a family. A bunch of people. To bail out their daughter/sister/niece/etc.
But, of course, as shown in the linked-to NBC Chicago investigation, maybe they were used to her being in traffic-violation trouble, after all the other violations on record, and thought it was not a big deal.
She also wasn’t very fond of having basic insurance. Who the fuck did she think she was?
What difference would it make how many of them didn’t have the money? 0+0+0+0=0 If they had to scrape it together, they would need more time to do it.
Finances aside, it could well be they didn’t think it was a big deal because of prior incidents. But I doubt they thought it would cause her to end up dead from a weekend in a holding cell.
And if she had this experience before, then why was she so distraught that she would even consider hanging herself over it?
Why did she drive an uninsured vehicle? Why did she get DUI’s?
That speaks to her character, or lack thereof.
It’s not “end up dead”. It is “commit suicide”. Stop the silliness. The autopsy is from a world-class forensic institute in Houston. It’s suicide.
And I was just riffing on that “moral culpability” thing of Frylock’s. Because if you think the officer is “morally culpable” for her suicide, then so are the family members who didn’t bail her out.
In this chain of events there is one person who was doing a job, as a public employee no less, and who wanted to and did send her to jail, by his spite and out of bounds unprofessional behavior. Some citizens are depressed and should not be forced into jail for no reason.
It’s quite possible the family was tired of bailing her out, but it doesn’t change anything.
Well, sure they are, except for having nothing to do with the circumstances that directly effected her being there! Outside of that minor detail, they are wholly culpable.
So depressed people who commit crimes like assaulting a police officer, shouldn’t be put in jail???
I saw the assault and it was by a professional public servant on a citizen. The reason you don’t do things like that is because of the unintended but reasonably foreseeable consequences.
Same meaning. They didn’t think she would commit suicide. Happy?
I’m not implying conspiracies or moral culpability for her death to the arresting officer. His misconduct as an officer is a separate issue. The jail is liable for whatever protocol that they violated in how they proceeded.
But I don’t believe her suicide is the fault of her family, or even her friend who crapped out on her. I have no idea what brought her to that point, but it is very often inexplicable to others when it happens.
I don’t think her prior violations are relevant to how this played out, or should be used to make her death any less a tragedy. It pains me to think we are going in this direction, but on preview I see that we are. I can only hope you won’t be one of them this time. What purpose would it serve? Why shouldn’t police and jails be accountable for following procedures, regardless of your opinion of the “character” of the person being arrested or detained?
There is no evidence that the officer assaulted her. There is evidence that she assaulted a police officer.
What capacity did an assistant medical examiner named Sara Doyle have in the autopsy procedure, and when? I’ve seen social media that says she’s married to a DA in Houston, thus raising conspiracy theories and charges of conflict of interest.
Do many people keep $500 in cash on hand? Banks are closed by noon or 1:00 most places on Saturday, and not open at all on Sundays.
Other than credit cards, maybe the family didn’t have that much credit left. And to wire money, don’t you need cash, cashier’s check or money order if done some place like a Western Union?
Plus, if bailed, wouldn’t they need to eventually pay off the remaining $4.5k?
What does that have to do with her committing suicide? Are you saying people with traffic violations are more likely to commit suicide? Or that we shouldn’t care when they do?
They should be on suicide watch, as per protocol.
Not true. There is documented bruising on her back and wrists.
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ATMs are open 24/7. Max withdrawal is usually $400 - so you’d need two people. Sandra Bland had more than two family members - at least a mother and two sisters, as well as friends that she called.
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Western Union office hours are usually something like 8am to 9pm 7 days a week. Some are 24/7.
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No, if you pay the bondsman $500, then he pays the $5K bail, and gets it back after the case is over.
This is my favorite part of the transcript:
Bland says: “You just slammed me. You knocked my head on the ground. I got epilepsy, you motherfucker.”
Encinia replies: “Good, good."
What a guy!