Tag: sandra bland
Curbing Traffic Stops Would Save Lives

Curbing Traffic Stops Would Save Lives

Reprinted with permission fromCreators.

Last weekend, in the wee hours of the night, Chicago police stopped a car carrying four people. When officers approached it, they saw a passenger holding a gun. The outcome was a familiar one: an 18-year-old man was shot by police.

Too often, traffic stops lead to tragedy. Philando Castile was shot to death in his car by a police officer in Minnesota. Last week, a mistrial was declared for a University of Cincinnati officer prosecuted for killing 43-year-old Samuel DuBose, whose car had a missing front license plate. Sandra Bland, yanked out of her car by a Texas state trooper after allegedly failing to signal a lane change, died in jail. All three victims were black.

Cops are also at risk. In March, a police officer died in a shootout with a passenger who ran from a car that had been pulled over in Tecumseh, Okla. In June, a police lieutenant was fatally gunned down after a stop in Newport, Arkansas.

When an officer stops and approaches a vehicle, both the cop and the driver are vulnerable. Any wrong move or misjudgment can turn the encounter deadly.

“Traffic stops and domestic violence are the highest-risk calls — you have no idea what you’re walking into,” John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told the Orlando Sentinel in 2010.

Even when motorists get off unharmed, the experience can be frightening, infuriating or humiliating. Stops breed fear and distrust of law enforcement, particularly among minorities.

So why do cops rely so much on the practice? Enforcing traffic laws is a large share of what they do. Ignoring motorists who drive too fast or ignore signals could foster chaos on the road.

But there are other ways to combat bad driving. University of California, Berkeley law professor Christopher Kutz points out that police in France do traffic stops at less than one-third the rate that American cops do. In England and Wales, it’s one-fourth.

The obvious alternative is using cameras. Speeders and red-light runners can be detected and ticketed by electronic means. Upon paying the fine, says Kutz, the offenders could be required to show that they are licensed and insured.

I’ve gotten citations from red-light and speed cameras, and while I resented the fines, I was grateful that I wasn’t detained on the roadside by an armed officer. The time I got a mere warning for (barely) failing to come to a complete stop on an empty suburban street after midnight was considerably less pleasant.

Being a gray-haired white male, I’ve been pulled over only three times in my adult life. Castile, 32, had been through that experience 49 times — and “was rarely ticketed for the reason he was stopped,” according to the StarTribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Joel Anderson, an African-American reporter for BuzzFeed, said on Twitter last month that he’s been stopped more than 30 times since he started driving — including five times for seatbelt violations when he was wearing his seatbelt.

Traffic stops are often an excuse for cops to search a car for drugs and guns. Curtailing police reliance on this pretext would free motorists from being dragooned to “consent” to searches for which the cops lack probable cause.

True, the change would let criminals operate at less risk. But hassling the innocent to catch the guilty is an abuse of our constitutional principles. In Illinois last year, police conducted 2.17 million traffic stops. Just 8,938 yielded contraband — one bust for every 242 stops.

The rare instances when police find evidence of a crime, Kutz told me, “don’t justify the enormous social costs of widespread police interventions.” This is an extremely inefficient way of detecting drug and gun crimes.

It’s also often discriminatory. “Minorities are more likely to be asked for consent to search, and less likely to have contraband,” notes Karen Sheley, police practices director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

The best option is not to abolish police traffic stops entirely, but to use them only when absolutely necessary. Accidents and impaired driving would require cops to deal face-to-face with motorists. But police could address missing license plates and broken taillights by taking photos and issuing tickets electronically.

One of the chief purposes of law enforcement is enhancing public safety. Curtailing traffic stops wouldn’t make the roads more dangerous. But it would save the lives of motorists and police who are now put in peril for no good reason.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

811 People Have Died in Jail Since Sandra Bland Became National News

811 People Have Died in Jail Since Sandra Bland Became National News

Published with permission from AlterNet.

Almost a year to the day later, there remain plenty of outstanding questions about the death of Sandra Bland in a Waller County, Texas jail. Though cops and other officials say Bland committed suicide by hanging herself in her jail cell, there are justifiable reasons to be suspicious of that account, from questions about the integrity of the original dashcam video to the excessive force displayed by the arresting officer in the video to the long history of state-sanctioned violence against black Americans.

We may never know the full story of Bland’s death, but she is an exception to the rule because unlike so many who die in American jails, we do know her name. In the year since Bland’s case became national news, aHuffington Post investigation reveals 811 people have died in U.S. jails. Many of those cases resemble Bland’s, with poor oversight and general disregard for arrestees’ health—particularly their mental state—creating frightening, desperate conditions for inmates that, in too many incidents, have yielded tragic results.

In one-third of cases analyzed by HuffPo writers Dana Liebelson and Ryan J. Reilly, the cause of death cited in inmate fatalities was suicide. Additionally, one-third of those who who died in local jails were arrested just three days prior or fewer. (Race, as in all things in this country, also plays a role. Liebelson and Reilly note that “African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and, on average, 32 percent of people who died in jail between 2000 and 2013, according to federal data.”)

It’s difficult to understand why inmates in local jails—temporary holding areas for people who are often charged with low-level offenses and unlikely to receive lengthy sentences—might be moved to take their own lives when the stakes seem comparatively low. Yet since 2000, suicide has been the primary cause of death in local jails. While inmates in prisons are incarcerated far longer, people charged with low-level offenses in local jails are often reeling from the shock, fear and panic of their recent arrest. (In Bland’s case and others, the trauma of recent police abuse can only heighten those feelings.) For these arrestees, Liebelson and Reilly found, the harrowing process of arrest and incarceration itself can be a contributing factor to the vulnerability many already feel when they are taken in.

“I don’t think most of us realize just how frightening that experience is,” Steve J. Martin, a corrections professional, told HuffPo. “You have a total and absolute loss—immediate loss—of control over your being, over your physical being.”

Jeffrey Metzner, a University of Colorado psychiatrist, elaborated: “You get clothes that don’t fit you, you get strip-searched, you lose any semblance of privacy, you don’t get to make many decisions that we all take for granted.”

Couple this with the lack of comprehensive medical screening and diagnosis that goes on at intake, along with the animalizing treatment many inmates receive, and an alarming picture is painted of the psychological toll taken on those who enter custody. Liebelson and Reilly cite the case of 32-year-old Donyale Thomas, from Berkeley, Missouri, who spent a week in jail for outstanding fines related to tickets. (The authors note that “Berkeley, like nearby Ferguson and many surrounding cities in St. Louis County, relied heavily on fines and fees for revenue.”) Thomas, who suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, says law enforcement officials ignored her need for her prescription medications and showed little concern for her general well-being:

In the Berkeley jail, Thomas soon started to feel “like an animal,” she recalled. She was placed in a windowless cell with two bunk beds. “I wasn’t able to bathe or anything or take care of my hygiene. I wasn’t able to see my kids. There were like three or four women in the cell. Pads were laying around the cells,” she recalled. “My mind started going in other routes and started thinking all opposite things and crazy things.” After a while, she said, “It gets to the point where you think, ‘OK, I just want to find my way out of this.’” Thomas said she told guards she was suicidal.

In response, guards removed Thomas’ blanket. A jail authority was told to monitor her behavior via a closed-circuit camera. Desperate, Thomas attempted suicide using material taken from her bra. She was only then given medical attention, ultimately being placed in psychiatric care after a doctor noted that she was “not fit for confinement.”

Yet even after all this, the Berkeley police chief told Liebelson and Reilly that Thomas was just trying to “get out of jail.” He expressed little empathy for her reaction to the choking conditions of the jail, stating that there was “enough room where if they want to get up and pace the room, she could’ve paced the room three, four, five steps one way and back and forth.”

Liebelson and Reilly note that often, arresting officers—low-wage workers who have typically received little to no mental health or suicide prevention training—are also tasked with interviewing their arrestees. Predictably, poor screening methods can result in the omission of critical information, from preexisting mental health conditions to notations of previous suicide attempts. Officers may also fail to note that an inmate is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, which increases the risk for suicide. In some cases, Liebelson and Reilly found law enforcement failed to do due diligence even when given explicit warnings about the potential for an inmate to self-harm:

Alberto Carlos Petrolino, a 50-year-old chef and artist, was arrested last July, after his ex-girlfriend called 911 to report that he planned to kill himself on the Golden Gate Bridge, according to a lawsuit filed by the family. Petrolino’s family contacted the jail to warn staff that he might try to take his own life, the lawsuit states; his mother was so worried that she took a bus to the jail, said Petrolino’s son, Fabio. And yet Petrolino wasn’t treated by a doctor or placed in specialized housing for suicidal inmates, the family claimed. Within 72 hours of his arrival, Petrolino had hanged himself in a shower.

In a similarly tragic Texas case, 22-year-old Marcus Johnson, jailed for using a fake ID, “told officers he had attempted suicide three times, including a few weeks earlier,” and alerted an officer at intake that “he had depression and bipolar disorder and had previously been institutionalized.” Because Johnson said he was not currently experiencing suicidal ideation, he wasn’t placed on suicide watch or provided the psychiatric medication his mother urged his jailers to give him. Only sporadically monitored by guards, Johnson hanged himself “with the drawstring of his pants.”

Liebelson and Reilly found that when they shared details like these with experts, they were repeatedly told that many of the tragedies they uncovered could have been avoided.

“If you talk to any of the experts in the field, they will tell you that we know how to stop people from committing suicide in jail,” Samuel Bagenstos, who previously served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, told HuffPo. “You need to do decent screening of people as they come into jail, and you need to put people in places where it’s not easy for them to kill themselves. At some level, it’s not really rocket science.”

Liebelson and Reilly also spoke with Raymond Patterson, a psychiatrist who has worked closely with corrections departments. He suggested that while it was impossible to make a jail cell “suicide proof,” ensuring that police take the time to communicate with inmates and mental health experts on staff is crucial:

“How about you talk to him?” Patterson suggested. “And you ask him questions like, ‘How are you? What’s going on in your life?’” It can take as little as five minutes for death to occur by strangulation, so people who are at high risk of suicide need to be under continuous watch. That means in-person contact, not watching remotely via a surveillance camera. (The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, for example, bans camera-only observation.)

Lindsay Hayes, who instructs jail staff on suicide prevention practices, says low-risk inmates should still receive check-ins every 15 minutes. He suggests someone other than the arresting officer should conduct the initial interview, in a private space where incoming arrestees are more likely to feel safe—and are thus more apt to be truthful. Hayes recommends that jail staffers have “eight hours of training on suicide prevention so they understand how to assess an inmate’s actions and history,” and “clear instructions on when to call for medical or mental health personnel.”

Sandra Bland’s arresting officer, Brian Encinia, was indicted for perjury earlier this year and fired from his job as a result. A wrongful death suit in Bland’s case isset to go to trial early next year. Amid all the conflicting reports, we know that Bland had previously stated she had experienced depression and PTSD. Liebelson and Reilly report that “jail staff did not take into consideration her reference to a suicide attempt earlier in the year.” They report she had a number of outstanding traffic fines accrued during a period when she was unemployed and lacking the funds to pay them off. (Her near-palpable exasperation in the video of her arrest is likely due to the sheer fatigue and annoyance of yet another “driving while black” interaction with the cops.)

None of us should pretend to know precisely what went down in that jail, but what seems certain is that Sandra Bland was wholly, viciously, failed by the justice system. Dana Liebelson and Ryan J. Reilly’s death tally shows that’s true of far too many people.

[h/t Huffington Post]

Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

 

Photo: Demonstrators hold signs of Sandra Bland and Kindra Chapman, both of whom died in custody, during a rally against police violence in New York July 22, 2015. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Sandra Bland’s Family: Perjury Charge Against Trooper A ‘Slap On The Wrist’

Sandra Bland’s Family: Perjury Charge Against Trooper A ‘Slap On The Wrist’

By Dawn Rhodes, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO — Sandra Bland’s family scoffed at the decision to charge the Texas state trooper who arrested her in a confrontational traffic stop last summer with perjury, saying any potential punishment for the misdemeanor offense would amount to “a slap on the wrist.”

“Where is the indictment for the assault, the battery, the false arrest?” Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, said in a news conference Thursday at her attorney’s office. “I can’t be expected to be excited about that because I felt there’s so much more that he should have been indicted on. My daughter was slapped.”

Bland’s mother and three sisters said the widely disseminated dash-cam video of Bland’s arrest makes clear Trooper Brian Encinia is culpable for more than simply lying about the circumstances of the controversial arrest. Bland, 28, who had lived in the Chicago suburbs including Naperville and Aurora, was found dead in her jail cell three days after the traffic stop, and officials ruled she committed suicide.

Encinia could face a maximum of a year in jail if convicted. He has been on paid administrative duty since the July 2015 incident, and Texas law enforcement officials announced shortly after the indictment that they planned to fire him.

Family members and attorneys also said Texas authorities have failed to share any developments in the investigation, and that the family learned of the indictment through media reports. Reed-Veal said she wants officials to follow through with efforts to fire Encinia, but the misdemeanor charge does not do enough to explain exactly what happened to Bland.

“(The indictment) doesn’t make a difference to me,” Reed-Veal said. “An indictment needs to be followed up by a conviction. You can indict all day long. If you get convicted, that might mean something. But right here, right now, that’s not justice to me.”

Attorney Cannon Lambert said the perjury charge against Encinia could bolster the family’s case in a civil rights lawsuit.

“There’s no question that there’s an acknowledgment that he lied. If you lie once, you’ll lie 50 times,” Lambert said. “We know that when you’re a liar, you have no credibility. We know that when you have no credibility, it’s difficult for you to support a claim that you make.”

Lambert said he wants to depose Encinia and thoroughly question his account of the day Bland was arrested.

“We want to ask him, ‘Why is it that you did what you did?’” Lambert said. “What were you thinking when you did what you did?”

Bland’s death continues to fuel widespread protests over police misconduct and transparency. One of Bland’s sisters, Sharon Cooper, said that for the family, fighting for information while also privately mourning has been difficult.

Cooper said the family struggled to get through the holiday season without Bland. They soon will commemorate what would have been her 29th birthday.

“It’s draining, but it’s worth the fight,” Cooper said. “It’s worth the struggle, the getting up and putting one foot in front of the other. We realize what happened to our daughter and our sister is so much bigger than us. It has always been our responsibility as a family to be an advocate on behalf of a family member who’s no longer here and who’s been silenced, but also for other people.”

©2016 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Otto Yamamoto via Flickr

 

Texas Grand Jury Resumes Investigation Into Arrest, Death Of Sandra Bland

Texas Grand Jury Resumes Investigation Into Arrest, Death Of Sandra Bland

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

HOUSTON — The Texas grand jury looking into the death of Sandra Bland resumed its examination Wednesday, renewing the possibility that the state trooper who arrested the 28-year-old woman could be charged.

The grand jury has already concluded that no felony was committed by the sheriff’s office or jailers in connection with Bland’s death.

Bland was found hanged by a plastic bag in her jail cell three days after she was arrested outside Houston on July 10 during a routine traffic stop.

Special prosecutor Shawn McDonald said the Waller County grand jury met for the fourth time Wednesday morning after reaching no decision last month on whether Brian T. Encinia, the trooper who arrested Bland, should face charges.

McDonald said he couldn’t say whether the grand jury was considering charges against Encinia, but said the panel will likely finish its work by day’s end.

He is one of five Houston-area lawyers appointed as independent special prosecutors to present the case to the grand jury. If there are any indictments, those lawyers will take the case to trial.

Bland’s family and activists have questioned how the traffic stop was conducted and whether Bland, an outspoken online advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement, killed herself. At the time Bland was stopped, she had just accepted a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

Encinia pulled over Bland for making an improper lane change near the university’s entrance, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. The confrontation that ensued before Bland was arrested and charged with assault was captured on video by a dashboard camera.

Bland was taken to the Waller County jail in nearby Hempstead where, three days later, unable to make $500 bail, she was discovered hanged in her cell. After an autopsy by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston, officials ruled her death a suicide.

Cannon Lambert, an attorney for the Bland family, said they have little hope the grand jury will indict Encinia.

“We would frankly be surprised,” Lambert told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

But Lambert said there’s still a chance the grand jury could charge the trooper.

“We called it a sham before — I’d love to be wrong,” he said, “We always have believed that he acted criminally.”

Lambert said he was hopeful that if the grand jury finishes Wednesday, investigators would finally release records, including a Texas Ranger’s report, that have so far been withheld due to the ongoing investigation.

Bland’s relatives have demanded the records as part of a wrongful death lawsuit they filed in August against the Waller County Sheriff’s Office, jail officials and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Last month, attorneys representing Waller County filed a motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Bland took her life because she was distraught that her family members didn’t bail her out of jail.

Following last month’s grand jury meetings, protesters gathered outside the Waller County courthouse and marched in a Houston park to condemn the process and call for the Justice Department to launch an independent investigation.

State lawmakers monitoring the case have asked for calm as the grand jury meets.

©2016 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Demonstrators hold signs of Sandra Bland and Kindra Chapman, both of whom died in custody, during a rally against police violence in New York July 22, 2015. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton