There’s a lot you need to know about Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old who reportedly committed suicide in a jail cell three days after an arrest for not using her signal lights while driving. There’s a lot we might not ever know about her. But here’s what we do know, and the stuff you might need to be clued up on if you want any idea of yet another case of the American police’s brutality against black people.
What’s happened?
Sandra was on her way to a job interview in Texas when state trooper Brian Encinia noticed she didn’t signal for a lane change, reports Reuters. So he pulled her over.
That seems like a tiny rule-break. Did he arrest her for that?
Yep. Violently, too. According to the police’s initial story, Sandra was taken out of her car to the side of the street, resisted arrest, became violent and was so arrested for assaulting a police officer. She was charged, taken to Waller County jail, asked about her history of mental health and then put in a cell. Three days later, on July 13th police say they discovered her hanging in the cell – according to them, she’d committed suicide.
That’s pretty grim…is that the end of it?
Not at all. This case falls a wider issue of police brutality against black people in America. According to The Guardian’s The Counted project, 648 people have been killed by police or died in police custody so far this year. That’s 4.12 black people in every million yet just 1.58 white people in every million. The maths shows – this year alone - black people are twice as likely to be killed by police than white people.
That’s fucked up
Yes, it is, and especially when you look at the many high profile cases of black men in particular being killed by police for a relatively piffling ‘crime’ e.g. selling unlicensed cigarettes, running away when being pulled over. You only have to look at how Dylann Roof – the white supremacist who killed nine black churchgoers in an historic church for civil rights in Charleston – is still alive, while so many black men who committed minor crimes/civil disobediences are dead, to know something’s amiss here.
There’s also other incidences, like a police officer body-rolling then pinning a 14-year-old black girl to the ground for the crime of, um…turning up to a pool party in a white neighbourhood. It goes on and on.
What does this mean for the Sandra Bland case?
Well, following protests across America about police brutality, the police have responded by trying to be transparent as possible. The Texas police department released a video of Sandra's arrest, taken from the dashboard camera of Encinia’s car:
It shows Encinia pulling a taser out on Sandra, shouting ‘I will light you up!’ and then pushing her to the ground. She complains ‘You’re about to break my wrist. Can you stop?’ but Encinia, along with a female officer, continue to restrain Sandra. At one point, she says ‘You knocked my head on the ground. I got epilepsy, you motherfucker.’ His reply? ‘Good, good.’
What was the reaction to the video?
Not good, because as well as showing Encinia disproportionately flipping out at a woman who clearly knew her rights – she repeatedly asks why she’s being arrested, with no answer given –it seemed to be edited.
At least that’s what Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay thought, tweeting a list of discrepancies with the video such as sudden cuts and loops.
This opinion was shared around so much social media – where so many people, fed up of the police’s lack of transparency about extrajudicial deaths, discuss theories about what’s really happened to cause an innocent black person’s death in police custody.
What other theories were there?
One ultra sinister – but not entirely unbelievable, given the context – theory was that Sandra was dead before she even got to prison. Evidence cited for this include the position of her shoulders making it look like she was laid down on the floor of her cell when the photo was taken, and the fact that she was taller than her cell, so how could she hang herself anyway?
How did the police react to that?
They published details explaining that Sandra had previously attempted suicide and explained this to officers at the jail she was imprisoned at. The authorities also ran an autopsy and her death has been ruled a suicide.
However, there were discrepancies in the two forms she filled out describing her mental state, and her family lawyer, Cannon Lambert, has said: ‘Why is it that a 28-year-old woman who had received two job offers [would] take her own life? Why would she call her mom in excitement about those jobs and take her own life?’ A friend and mentor who’d spoken to her on the phone while she was in jail also said: ‘It just makes no sense. Sandy was a soldier; she wasn't fazed about it’
What does it all mean now?
We’re going to defer to Kim Kardashian right now, who tweeted:
And Nicki Minaj, who wanted the attention put on her with regards the whole MTV VMA nomination snub/Taylor Swift 'feud' to be re-routed to this more important issue
Because even if Sandra did kill herself, it’s very little consolation that she died in police custody after being violently arrested for such a small misdemeanor. Her sister Sharon Cooper’s said: ‘I simply feel like the officer was picking on her, and I believe that is petty’. On top of this, Texas Senator Royce West has called the death suspicious, complaining that Sandra’s jailers did not do enough suicide checks on her.
What now?
Sandra’s family want an independent investigation into Sandra’s death. People are also – quite rightly – wondering what the hell Sandra was doing in jail in the first place.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.