Civil Rights
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| By misinterpreting her civil rights, Sandra Bland managed to escalate a simple traffic stop and warning into her death by suicide! |
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| By misinterpreting her civil rights, Sandra Bland managed to escalate a simple traffic stop and warning into her death by suicide! |
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Several years ago, I was involved in an altercation between a young soldier and his sergeant. The soldier had apparently spent most of his life practicing annoying white people and authority figures generally. He was trying mightily to do that to both me and the black sergeant, and was, perhaps unknowingly, succeeding beyond his wildest dreams.
Things came to a head when the soldier pulled out a Bowie knife he wasn't supposed to have and contemptuously snarled at the sergeant, "I will cut you, man!"
I angrily decided I had just about enough of his crap, pulled my .45 caliber M1911A1 pistol, jacked a round in the chamber, and pointed squarely it at the bridge of his nose. "Now listen very carefully," I said, "I'm going to explain to you what just happened."
"You have just committed what is known as a felony," I told him. "Specifically, an assault with a deadly weapon upon a superior noncommissioned officer in front of two reliable witnesses. This gives your sergeant reason to fear for his life, which gives me the legal authority to use deadly force to stop you! So, in the next five seconds, you are going to either: nicely and carefully hand that knife to the sergeant; or have what passes for your brains splattered all over that wall in back of you! One... Two..."
On "three," the soldier decided he didn't want to die right then and there and handed the knife to the sergeant. That was a wise decision; I was as serious as a heart attack within two seconds of shooting him.
I should have handled the situation otherwise, I suppose, but I was angry and I had a gun. He had a knife. Annoying somebody with a gun is rarely a good idea. So is bringing a knife to a gunfight! I'm not saying I was right, you understand, only that he was definitely within two seconds of being stone cold, dead!
I was reminded of this traumatic experience recently when I saw rerun after rerun of the July 10, 2015, since removed dash camera recording of Sandra Bland's encounter with Texas state trooper Brian Encinina. Officer Encinina was in the process of respectfully giving Ms. Bland, a Illinois resident, a written warning regarding the Texas traffic requirement to signal lane changes. Unfortunately for her, the situation rapidly escalated into being forcibly restrained, handcuffed, and taken to jail for assault upon a public servant and resisting arrest (with two law enforcement officer witnesses). Several videos are available, including one taken by Ms. Brand herself on her smart phone. All of them show her resisting arrest.
I don't pretend to understand why, but my limited perusal of police reality shows suggests that men are pretty uniformly goofy, but supposedly adult women frequently act like spoiled, bratty two-year olds. They irritate, harass, annoy and insult the staff, doing everything they can to provoke a confrontation. They insist on rights they don't have, make wild accusations, try various means of seduction, complicate and prolong their booking process, and make their incarceration as long, difficult, and unpleasant as possible. They use profanity and filthy language that would make a Somali pirate vomit! They come in on some minor charge like public intoxication or shoplifting and frequently manage within minutes to offend, curse, kick, bite, spit, scratch, scream and rage their way into felony assault of a police officer or worse. Such was the case of Sandra Bland.
At her bond hearing, Ms. Bland managed not to convince the judge that she should be released on her own recognizance, and subsequently failed to post the $5000 bond the judge imposed for her release. Shortly afterward, she was found dead in her cell. An autopsy indicated that she died from asphyxiation, probably caused by a garbage bag that was found tied in a noose around her neck. So far, there has been no credible indication other than that she voluntarily hanged herself in her cell with the garbage bag. Imagine, dying from hanging your own self like a piece of garbage!
Sandra's mother, who was not involved in the altercation at all, was awarded 1.9 million dollars in a wrongful death lawsuit, so she's now a millionaire! Her daughter is still dead! Somehow, that doesn't seem right!
Ms. Bland was known to be a proponent of civil rights, one of which is the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It specifies that "no person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." In Miranda vs. Arizona the US Supreme Court held that "The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination requires law enforcement officials to advise a suspect interrogated in custody of his rights to remain silent and to obtain an attorney."
Note that Miranda requires law enforcement officials to advise a suspect interrogated in custody of his rights to remain silent and to obtain an attorney, not that he or she does not have these rights beforehand. Also, the Court ruled in Salinas vs. Texas that this right specifically must be invoked for it to apply. If one gives up his right to remain silent, anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of law. This definitely means that Ms. Bland could have kept her mouth shut unless asked a question by officer Encinina, at which time she could have refused to answer, Instead, she voluntarily launched into a tirade of abuse and profanity that started the chain of events that got her taken to the jail where she later died.
Then there is the case of Philando Castile, the victim of a 40-second encounter with St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez on July 6, 2016, that resulted in his being shot dead. His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, decided to become involved, argued with officer Yanez and filmed herself and Mr. Castile for about ten minutes with her smart phone, instead of minding her own business, calling an ambulance and giving him first aid, as he lay dying.
Mr. Castile had the misfortune of a passing resemblance to a robbery suspect that Officer Yanez and his partner Officer Joseph Kauser were looking for, and having a broken tail light that gave them a legal cause to stop him. He reportedly compounded the situation by having a recognizable odor of marijuana smoke in his car. This may have heightened Officer Yanez' awareness and cop reflexes and depressed his own, possibly compromising his judgment as well. In any case, Mr. Castile volunteered to Officer Yanez that he had a gun "on him," was ordered not to reach for it, did something that lead the officer to claim that he was reaching for it anyway, and was subsequently shot five times by the seven rounds Officer Yanez fired into the car. He died at a hospital later that evening.
Ms. Reynolds' video, the police dashcam recordings, and other evidence available to the public, cast doubt on Officer Yanez' recollection of events, but he was cleared by a jury of all criminal charges against him and can never, ever, be prosecuted for what happened again. Even so, he was fired the same day by the St. Anthony Police Department. Did Officer Yanez kill Mr. Castile? Obviously! Did Mr. Castile deserve to die? Probably not! Did Officer Yanez use good judgment? It surely doesn't look that way to me! Two guys had guns here, but it's Mr. Castile, who didn't panic, not Officer Yanez, who did, who's dead. If he had been sufficiently paranoid and recognized the seriousness of the situation he was in, kept quiet about the gun, and kept his hands where they could have been easily seen, he might still be alive. Regardless of why he was carrying a firearm in the first place, even though by all accounts he had a legal right to do so, he was "dead right," just as dead as he would have been if he had been "dead wrong!"
Mr. Castile's family received a settlement of three million dollars from Minnesota taxpayers for his wrongful death. No doubt this will serve as a powerful incentive for municipalities across the Country to be more careful to hire police officers who are somewhat less prone to panic than was Officer Yanez. One has to wonder, however, what motivation this sudden increase in wealth of the Castile family, as well as that in other families of people killed by police, will create for indigent parents. Will they be more or less motivated to counsel their children about the dangers inherent in situations like getting caught smoking pot while driving, and drawing police attention to a concealed weapon instead of leaving it safely locked up at home?
In sharp contrast to Ms. Bland's and Mr. Castile's encounters, on September 3, 2015, Dwayne Bryant, a black motivational speaker and fellow Illinois resident, was stopped in northwest Indiana by a State Trooper who clocked him going 85 mph in a 65 mph zone.
Mr. Bryant, the president of Chicago-based Inner Vision International, remained calm and respectful, told the officer who he was and where he was going, and waited while the officer checked his license and registration. The trooper came back with a citation. He explained that, in Indiana, he could have written Bryant up for reckless driving because he was going 20 mph over the speed limit. Instead, he only wrote a $150 speeding ticket.
In response, Mr. Bryant admitted that he was wrong for speeding and asked if he could take a picture so he could post about the experience and remind his students about the importance of being respectful and taking responsibility for their actions. The officer's response was to ask Mr. Bryant to give him back the ticket and then ripped it up, issuing a warning instead. Nobody's civil rights appear to have been violated here.
All sorts of observations and speculation have arisen regarding the circumstances surrounding Ms. Bland's arrest and incarceration and her and Mr. Castile's death, but one fact is crystal clear: Regardless of who did what to whom, or who's to blame, Mr. Bryant is still alive, while Ms. Bland and Mr. Castile are undeniably dead! It's hard to believe that they would be dead, regardless of what anyone else did or didn't do, if they had exercised their right to remain silent, accepted the warning, and carefully followed the officers' explicit orders - just like Mr. Bryant did. Why did their lives matter so little to them that they decided to do otherwise?
Ms. Bland did many, many other things she probably would have been well advised not to do. She had at least ten previous encounters with police in Illinois and Texas. From these, she reportedly owed $7,579 in unpaid fines, so she was no stranger to the criminal justice system and the rights including Miranda, associated with it. I think it highly likely that she was the victim of a belief, instilled in her by others, for their own nefarious purposes, that she had some kind of obligation to exercise rights that she, in fact, did not have. Those other people failed adequately to inform her of different rights that would have kept her out of trouble. One of these is the right to believe what is true. If a person gives up that right, he or she will suffer the consequences of making decisions based on lies. In Philando Castile's case, he was a victim of the erroneous belief that telling a police officer that he had a gun made him seem somehow less of a threat than he already appeared to be. In Sandra Bland's case, the false belief that sassing a police officer is OK ultimately got her killed. Nobody, involved in these incidents, including Ms. Bland's family and a boyfriend who refused to post bond for her, and Ms. Reynolds who didn't do a thing to help her dying boyfriend, acted as if their lives mattered at all!
For SHAME, people!
In my opinion, far too many victims of lies like this are being killed in police confrontations because of failure to exercise what are their civil rights. Very few catastrophic events in history has been other than the result of a chain of preceding events, the lack of any link of which would have prevented it from occurring. If you forge any of the links in the chain of events that lead to your death, you're more guilty than anyone else who might have done that, because you are the person most responsible for your life! It doesn't matter one bit what other people did to get you killed if you made it possible for them to do that and you are the one who's dead! Your life should matter more than that! Mr. Bryant's life certainly did!
Perhaps the best advice was provided by her four-year-old daughter as Ms. Reynolds was freaking out, "Mom, please stop cussing and screaming 'cause I don't want you to get shooted!"
In an effort to save the lives of others who might otherwise get themselves killed because of this, I would like to point out what I know of my civil rights, and what Mr. Bryant obviously knew about his, the exercise of which has kept me out of trouble for over 81 years, and will probably do also for him:
As Mr. Bryant remarked afterward, "I am crying in my car, because God is SOOOO faithful! I sincerely believe, in MOST instances, it is OUR ATTITUDE, OUR BEHAVIOR, OUR RESPONSE that dictates the officer's response."