Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis is characterizing Sandra Bland — who died last week in a jail in the Texas county — as being “very combative” and “not a model person” during the traffic stop that led to her arrest and incarceration. His disparaging assessment appears to be far from the truth.
Recently released dashboard camera video of Bland’s arrest shows that throughout her ordeal on a Texas roadway Bland behaved appropriately and much as would many other ordinary people in a similar situation. Bland’s response may even have been more muted than average considering the infuriating nonsense she had to deal with — an out-of-control cop pulling her over for changing lanes without using a turn signal and then proceeding, for no good reason, to force her out of her car, throw her to the ground, handcuff her, and send her off to jail.
Bland’s response to the police harassment and brutality is commendable. Unless you accept the police-state mindset that Mathis’ comments suggest, you can’t help but admire Bland boldly standing up to a cop who literally had the power of life and death in his hands on that Texas roadway.
In the video we see and hear Bland being brutally attacked and arrested for expressing her opinion (after the arresting cop asked her for it), refusing to put out the cigarette she was smoking in her own car, or resisting arrest (let the nonsense of that excuse for an arrest settle in). After Bland is in handcuffs and other cops are present, you can even hear the cop who arrested her trying to work out, while on the phone with someone, a story to excuse his abuse of Bland.
As the cop escalated his physical attack, Bland yelled. Bland cursed. Bland insulted the policeman. She asked him repeatedly to give a logical justification, which never came, for his physical aggression against her.
If Bland continued to be upset and strongly communicated her anger during her confinement the next three days, how would that be anything but a normal, justified reaction? Why shouldn’t she scream about the abuse of her rights and the pain inflicted on her? Why shouldn’t she challenge the illogic and injustice of her captors’ actions? Such is natural and to be expected in reaction to extreme harassment and physical abuse.
Bland is now dead, apparently from hanging in a jail cell after being forcibly confined for three days. She was a victim of an out-of-control police, prison, and prosecution system that allowed a cop to harass, attack, and arrest her illegitimately and then proceeded to keep her in jail. Did Bland kill herself, or was she murdered? Some of Bland’s friends and family members dispute the suicide allegation. But, either way — suicide or murder — it is all but certain that the unjust system that created so much needless anguish for Bland in her final days, and individuals who carried out tasks to advance the injustice, are culpable for Bland’s death.
