Sandra Bland was in the news this week when video of a traffic stop gone wrong surfaced after she had been found dead in her cell after having spent three days in jail.
This has been a theme far too prevalent in the news for the past year or so, ever since the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri last August. The death sparked outrage, protests, and shed new light on the state of police brutality in our nation. Since then many other stories have surfaced of police killing unarmed people and dogs with seemingly no provocation.
The Sandra Bland story is, thus, just the latest salvo in an ongoing war against police brutality in our nation. Now, if you've seen the video, or simply read the story, you probably agree with me that the officer had absolutely no reason for arresting Ms. Bland, putting her in a jail cell, and requesting a $5,000 bail bond against her simply for refusing to signal when changing lanes. This is the kind of garbage that people like Ayn Rand have been warning against when they say things like, "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." That kind of insight is why libertarians have always fought for fewer laws and less government to allow people to be free to live their own lives.
What's the point here? I happened to be listening to Glen Beck's program from Thursday of this week and I heard the three fill ins (I'm sorry, I don't know their names) talking about the Bland case. Now, whether she killed herself or not is a story all unto itself, and at this point the evidence is not in Ms. Bland's favor, but I'm not going to get into that today. I am far more concerned about the fact that she was in prison in the first place. The way they discussed the situation, though, bothered me because it seemed like they were blaming Ms. Bland for being arrested. Yes, she failed to signal as she was changing lanes. That's usually cause for, at worst, a minor fine. I can say from personal experience that plenty of people fail to signal when they're changing lanes every time I'm on the road, and I've never actually seen someone get pulled over for it.
The point of contention in the confrontation seems to be Ms. Bland's cigarette. She was smoking (probably because she was stressed out for being pulled over for such a minor offence), and the officer asked her to put out her cigarette. Now, I'm given to understand that this is a fairly regular procedure because the smoke can cover the scent of alcohol on a person who has been drinking. I understand that, but the officer didn't explain that; he ordered Ms. Bland to put out her cigarette, then got combative with her when she refused. This is probably my biggest issue with police lately: whenever you refuse to follow their orders, they get combative. Police treat failing to follow their orders as a crime, even though that's not the case. Does that mean that you shouldn't follow police orders? Not necessarily, but it does mean that the police are not the ultimate authority and everything they say is not law.
What happened to Sandra Bland? She was pulled over for a minor offence, then a petty police officer ordered her to put out her cigarette. When she failed to comply, instead of telling Ms. Bland his reason for wanting her to put out her cigarette, he ordered her from the vehicle and pointed his taser at her. He threatened to "light her ass up" if she continued to fail to comply with his orders. He then arrested her and put her in prison for "assaulting an officer," which he claims happened off camera. As an aside, there is video evidence from a bystander that the officer assaulted Ms. Bland, but there is no evidence that she assaulted him.
In the end, Sandra ended up in prison with a ridiculous bail bond set for her release, and three days later she was found dead. Even if she had committed suicide, is she to blame? When a person is in prison, they're in the state's care. She was not being monitored, even though the prison had evidence that she may be depressed. How is this different from a person whose medical care is mismanaged so badly by the prison they end up dying?
I've been bothered by the growing police state in our country for years. We've seen massive police maneuvers like the one in Boston after the bombing at the Boston Marathon. We saw the ridiculous response to Christopher Dorner in southern California (where I'm currently living but was not living at the time). They both showed just how much force the police are willing to use when they want to "catch a criminal." These are just the most well known cases. Has anyone heard of the police response to Erin Frein shooting a police officer in Pennsylvania last year? Officers were flooding in from all over to hunt for this man. Federal Agents were searching for him. It's incredible.
The point is, we're living in a police state. If one does something "illegal," no matter how minor, one is subject to any amount of police force the officer on duty deems necessary. Until recently, officers were free to beat suspects without remorse and without any expectation of back-lash. An officer's word was held as more important than video evidence, and often an officer's use of force was written off as justified because a suspect was being "non-cooperative and combative." I don't know about you, but if I was being arrested for something that I felt was unjustified, I'd probably be non-cooperative at the least, and likely combative as well if officers were hitting me, shoving me, and handcuffing me without cause.
What can we do about it? We can know our rights, and we can report police abuse. Remember, the point of any law is to make someone a criminal for not following it. If we continue to learn what rights people actually should have and promoting politicians who support these rights, we might be able to make a change and reduce the scope of the government, thereby reducing the police state.
Sandra was recorded on a voicemail as having said, "How this switching lanes with no signal turned into all this...I don't even know." That's what I want to know, too. #whathappenedtosandrabland?
No comments:
Post a Comment