Waller County: 'Illegal' Lane Change leads to Death

He's right though, nobody likes a blue falcon and most organizations will work to eliminate them. Of course, there's a difference between a normal blue falcon, and someone reporting an outright crime. Covering for your buddy only goes so far.

 

I am glad you agree to the patently obvious.

That is not at all what I am saying. I am saying that one of the parties to the following exchange is behaving oddly:

To me, that is abnormal. I have never seen or heard someone react like that to a cop saying those things. Out of the ordinary is suspicious.

You don't need kid gloves or to treat LEO with fear, just don't go on lunatic rants when they ask a simple question like, "Are you okay?" Even when she did act weird it didn't justify a search, arrest, or worse, it just prolonged the encounter and led to him asking her to step out of the car. It was her refusal to submit to a lawful order (aka resisting) that led to her arrest. So we need to not act crazy to avoid being politely ordered to get out of our cars. That is hardly the fear of living in a police state.

 

How is that exchange abnormal?

 

She is rude as hell.... and I don't think most people pulled over are that rude.... but it isn't criminal.

 

It is abnormal because she is flipping out over the cop saying four very innocuous things to her. That is not how traffic stops normally occur. The same cop even said the same question, "Are you okay?" to another person seconds earlier. She didn't start ranting at him. She ended up with a warning and was sent on her way.

 

Well, not until the part where she refuses to get out of the car and then assaults the police officer. That's when it goes from being rude to being something that got her arrested.

 

And she was pissed off for being pulled over after getting over for a cop that was tailgating her. There is no law against being pissed off at being pulled over for a stupid reason.

 

The cop wasn't tailgating her, and it wasn't a stupid reason. She failed to use her signal twice in front of the same cop in less than 30 seconds. Countless traffic accidents are caused by people who don't use their signals and the cop was just trying to give her a warning so she'd think to use them in the future. She turned it into more than that.

 

I think the whole not using her turn signal twice kind of iced it.

She was rude as hell....... I don't know what it is even being discussed because it doesn't change anything.... it is an ancillary issue.

 

It's not that I have the idea that the goal should be to end all traffic situations as quickly as possible, but that the LEO shouldn't be trying to escalate a situation which he was.

I've seen people react very similar to Bland when questioned by cops or perhaps even worse. Some of the time I felt sympathetic toward the law enforcement officer. They have a job to do which by its definition is often disagreeable to people. That isn't easy. Add to that an inherent risk in their jobs, and it's even more difficult.

But because of this they shouldn't waste time on an upset person who was pulled over for failure to signal when they thought they were getting out of the way of the cop.

There are more serious things on which they can spend their time.

 

So being rude warrants a face slam to the ground? Do you have proof of her "assaulting" the officer? Video cam seems to have conveniently not caught that series of events

 

Refusing to comply with a lawful order warrants being arrested, kicking and scratching at the officer trying to arrest you warrants being slammed to the ground IMO.

As to evidence, it was reported that he had scratches from the encounter and he claims to have been kicked. Given that we can see Bland struggling with the officer, I don't see any reason to doubt those claims.

 

I see where you're coming from, and I respect that, but I've seen too many of these cases where our vision of the incident is just conveniently disrupted at the most critical time. I remember reading an article about a week after the incident from a conservative radio show in which they stated that judging from the post-incident report tape, it was obvious that they significantly edited the interview with the officer.

All in all, I agree that this entire incident could have/should have been avoided if the driver had simply complied with the officer. But my point is this: we are becoming too complacent with our police officers foregoing their duties to serve citizens and AT TIMES bringing themselves down to the level of the people they are serving. My friend's father is a policer sergeant with HPD police, and will attest to this growing culture in US policing, where the officers see themselves as beyond reproach in all instances. To sum my argument up: sure this could have all been avoided had the lady just complied, but is that any excuse for how she was treated, and what ultimately happened to her?

 

There's no question that there are some bad cops out there, but IMO this wasn't one of them. It's so rare that a cop is out simply to give people warnings, squandering one of those rare occasions and ending up getting thrown in jail is just about as stupid a thing as I can imagine. It's like being single and alone at a bar and having a supermodel walk up to you with the intention of taking you home....then you tell her to piss off before she gets the chance to tell you her intentions.

I think that's indicative of a larger problem. For whatever reason lately people seem to think they can pretty much say or do whatever they want around cops without repercussion and that's simply not true....and has never been true.

When you get stopped by a cop, obviously it's not the happiest of moments, but I just can't feel sorry for people that act rudely and foolishly to cops and have it backfire on them no matter who it is. You brought that on yourself.

Now in the instances where it's just a bad cop treating people poorly....like if it was a cop that had an attitude like Sandra Bland just going off on someone who didn't do anything, well that's different.

 

Bobby stop give up man this officer was out of line even his boss has said there was no reason to pull her over so once again there wouldn't have been a issue or a attitude.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/31/texas-trooper-boss-says-there-was-no-reason-to-pull-over-sandra-bland/?intcmp=hplnws

 

Have you ever heard anyone act irritated before?

Your definition of a lunatic rant sounds very different than most people. Doing the exchange you cite she never yells or bangs on stuff she is irritated but isn't ranting.
This is a rant:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WINDtlPXmmE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
How Bland is acting, up until she is told to get out of the car, is hardly close to that.

Except you yourself said she couldn't be arrested for not putting out her cigarette so the LEO did something else. That sounds like he, not her is the one prolonging the encounter and fishing for a reason to search or arrest her. Further you fail to note in the exchange above there is an uncomfortable pause between when she says "I'm done, yeah." and then he ask her to put out the cigarette. Right there it is him and not her prolonging the situation.

This again goes against what he said himself, that he was only going to give her a warning. If so why then did he choose to ask her to put out her cigarette and try to keep her there further?

I agree it was her refusal to submit to a lawful order and I also agree she does overreact to it. That is why I blame Bland a lot too. That said your view is still very troubling.

You say "I have never seen or heard someone react like that to a cop saying those things." Why is that? Have you ever seen someone act irritated before in any other situation? Is it because people shouldn't act that way to LE as opposed to others because LE can arrest you or do worse?

 

You may want to read that article in your link. The headline doesn't match what the article says. Someone made a mistake. The article says the troopers boss said there WAS REASON to pull over bland. I guess you saw the headline but didn't read the article.

 

That's the key. It's not criminal and being rude in an uncomfortable situation in and of itself isn't suspicious. As I said earlier I doubt anyone would think that someone being irritated to a building inspector who was going to fine them would be suspicious.

Stupidmoniker seems to consider that being rude to a LEO is suspicious. He hasn't answered why that is and not necessarily in other cases where someone is rude. As I've stated if irritation and rudeness are the standards that warrant further investigation by LE then I don't see how that is logically anything but that we should coddle and fear LE.

Thankfully it seems like even this LEO's superiors don't agree with that.

 

Except then why should we treat LE any differently than anyone else whose job frequently involves putting people into an unhappy situation? Should we treat them differently than building inspectors, health inspectors, auditors, etc.. ?

The problem that I see with this attitude is that LE should be trained enough and be professional to not allow their feelings affect their actions. Understandably they aren't robots but at the same time we should expect them to behave professionally. As we see with the case in Cincinnati the consequences of an LEO not being able to control themselves are deadly.

 

Is this a serious question? Come on now.

If I asked someone who was apparently visibly upset if they were okay, and they responded to me the way she did, hell yes I would say it was a lunatic rant. Both her words and her tone are inappropriate for a conversation with another human being that is not doing anything wrong.

So anything short of famous cartoonish movie rants is normal?

Yes, he cannot arrest her for not putting out her cigarette. Instead she made another weird and defiant statement.

He is hardly fishing, the only information gathering questions he asked were if she had her license and registration, how long she had been in Texas, whether or not she had a driver's license (which I guess she had failed to provide when asked, it is a bit hard to hear), where she was headed now, what was wrong, and if she was okay. All but one of those questions were asked before he went back to his car and ran her license. So his "fishing" consisted of "Are you okay?" The entire stop from his car stopping to asking her to step out of the car takes about six minutes, which is not an unusually long traffic stop.

I didn't write in the pauses. We don't know what happened between her stopping talking and him asking her to put out the cigarette (which was a pause of three seconds). Maybe she took a drag on her cigarette and it was the first one since he was standing there talking to her. Maybe she just lit it up in front of him. Maybe she blew smoke at him. It also looks like during the "uncomfortable pause" that he is doing something with his pen and pad. I don't know that waiting three seconds before saying your next sentence is "prolonging the situation". Certainly her refusal to put out the cigarette prolonged the situation just as much as him asking her did.

Asking her to put out the cigarette is now an attempt to keep her there? What if she had put it out? He would have been able to keep her there a half second more?

Her overreaction is the whole thing. That is the point. He is saying very innocuous things and she is overreacting. Not only that, but you agree she is overreacting. Then you say that it is not suspicious or abnormal. A normal reaction is normal. And overreaction is something more than is normal, therefor abnormal.

Yep, that is what I said.

Why did I say that? Because it is true. Why have I not seen that or heard of it? Because it is abnormal behavior. It is something other than the usual. It is rare. It is different. It draws attention.

Again, is this a serious question?

People should not act that way at all. If they do, they are looked at askance. If the general public thinks you are acting weird they make a comment about it to their friends. If law enforcement thinks you are acting weird it subjects you to increased scrutiny. The nature of interacting with law enforcement is that they can arrest you, but that is unavoidable. It seems like what you are asking for is that law enforcement ignore weird behavior just because they have the power to arrest, which to me, as a person in the criminal justice field, seems bizarre.

Let me come at this from another angle. If one of my clients was arrested for PC148 (in CA that is resist/obstruct/delay a police officer) and I received this video in discovery, I would not be advising my client to try to fight the case or file a lawsuit against the officer/city/department. I would tell them that they were acting like an oddball and fought the cop who was performing his duty. Coming into court on Monday following a Friday arrest, they probably get time served and move on with their life. If my client insisted on going to trial I might pitch something about the cop intentionally pushing her buttons to the jury and try to play the "Are you done?" portion only, but I wouldn't expect to win.

A friend said to me last night that he thought she probably had Borderline Personality Disorder. Symptoms include:
Intense emotions and mood swings
Self-harming behaviors like cutting
Suicide attempts
Seeing people as "good" or "bad" and that view can change suddenly
Impulsive behaviors like substance abuse and reckless driving
A frantic fear of being left alone (she hung herself in a cell where she was left alone, all the other female inmates were in the other cell across the hall)
Problems with anger, such as violent temper tantrums
Aggressive behavior