Police Brutality, Insensitivity and Militarism/Robotism is all the Rage Now!

[Lauren Johnson]

Here is a complete transcript of the audio from Huffington Post. Encina's explanation to a supervisor is priceless. What? Who me?

During the traffic stop that led to her arrest and, ultimately, her death in a Texas jail, Sandra Bland repeatedly questioned the decisions of state Trooper Brian Encinia and asserted rights she said Encinia was violating.

A close look at the police car dashcam video that recorded the exchange shows her questions had merit: Encinia at every occasion escalates the tension. He tells Bland, a Black Lives Matter activist, she's under arrest before she has even left her car, shouts at her for moving after ordering her to move, refuses to answer questions about why she's being arrested and, out of the camera's view, apparently slams her to the ground. He gets testy with her -- "Are you done?" -- when she explains after he points out she seems irritated. And, contrary to a recent Supreme Court decision, he unconstitutionally extends the traffic stop, it appears, out of spite.

The video also shows that Encina never actually ordered Bland to put out her cigarette, but rather asked her politely, to which she responded with a question. To which he answered with aggression.

At times, the confrontation becomes chaotic, but a transcript shows Bland answering the trooper's questions, asserting her rights, and, eventually, directly challenging his treatment of her -- an evaluation shared by some police officers who've watched the video.

The following exchange -- transcribed with the help of HuffPost's Matt Ramos and Dhyana Taylor -- comes after the dashcam video shows Encinia quickly driving toward the rear of Bland's car.

State Trooper Brian Encinia: Hello ma'am. We're the Texas Highway Patrol and the reason for your stop is because you failed to signal the lane change. Do you have your driver's license and registration with you? What's wrong? How long have you been in Texas?
Sandra Bland: Got here just today.
Encinia: OK. Do you have a driver's license? (Pause) OK, where you headed to now? Give me a few minutes.
(Bland inaudible)
(Encinia returns to his car for several minutes, then approaches Bland again.)
Encinia: OK, ma'am. (Pause.) You OK?
Bland: I'm waiting on you. This is your job. I'm waiting on you. When're you going to let me go?
Encinia: I don't know, you seem very really irritated.
Bland: I am. I really am. I feel like it's crap what I'm getting a ticket for. I was getting out of your way. You were speeding up, tailing me, so I move over and you stop me. So yeah, I am a little irritated, but that doesn't stop you from giving me a ticket, so [inaudible] ticket.
Encinia: Are you done?
Bland: You asked me what was wrong, now I told you.
Encinia: OK.
Bland: So now I'm done, yeah.
Encinia: You mind putting out your cigarette, please? If you don't mind?
Bland: I'm in my car, why do I have to put out my cigarette?
Encinia: Well you can step on out now.
Bland: I don't have to step out of my car.
Encinia: Step out of the car.
Bland: Why am I ...
Encinia: Step out of the car!
Bland: No, you don't have the right. No, you don't have the right.
Encinia: Step out of the car.
Bland: You do nothave the right. You do not have the right to do this.
Encinia: I do have the right, now step out or I will remove you.
Bland: I refuse to talk to you other than to identify myself. [crosstalk] I am getting removed for a failure to signal?
Encinia: Step out or I will remove you. I'm giving you a lawful order.
Get out of the car now or I'm going to remove you.
Bland: And I'm calling my lawyer.
Encinia: I'm going to yank you out of here. (Reaches inside the car.)
Bland: OK, you're going to yank me out of my car? OK, alright.
Encinia (calling in backup): 2547.
Bland: Let's do this.
Encinia: Yeah, we're going to. (Grabs for Bland.)
Bland: Don't touch me!
Encinia: Get out of the car!
Bland: Don't touch me. Don't touch me! I'm not under arrest -- you don't have the right to take me out of the car.
Encinia: You are under arrest!
Bland: I'm under arrest? For what? For what? For what?
Encinia (to dispatch): 2547 county fm 1098 (inaudible) send me another unit. (To Bland) Get out of the car! Get out of the car now!
Bland: Why am I being apprehended? You're trying to give me a ticket for failure ...
Encinia: I said get out of the car!
Bland: Why am I being apprehended? You just opened my --
Encinia: Im giving you a lawful order. I'm going to drag you out of here.
Bland: So you're threatening to drag me out of my own car?
Encinia: Get out of the car!
Bland: And then you're going to [crosstalk] me?
Encinia: I will light you up! Get out! Now! (Draws stun gun and points it at Bland.)
Bland: Wow. Wow. (Bland exits car.)
Encinia: Get out. Now. Get out of the car!
Bland: For a failure to signal? You're doing all of this for a failure to signal?
Encinia: Get over there.
Bland: Right. yeah, lets take this to court, let's do this.
Encinia: Go ahead.
Bland: For a failure to signal? Yup, for a failure to signal!
Encinia: Get off the phone!
Bland: (crosstalk)
Encinia: Get off the phone! Put your phone down!
Bland: I'm not on the phone. I have a right to record. This is my property. Sir?
Encinia: Put your phone down right now. Put your phone down!
(Bland slams phone down on her trunk.)
Bland: For a fucking failure to signal. My goodness. Y'all are interesting. Very interesting.
Encinia: Come over here. Come over here now.
Bland: You feelin' good about yourself?
Encinia: Stand right here. Stand right there.
Bland: You feelin' good about yourself? For a failure to signal? You feel real good about yourself don't you? You feel good about yourself don't you?
Encinia: Turn around. Turn around. Turn around now. Put your hands behind your back.
Bland: Why am I being arrested?
Encinia: Turn around ...
Bland: Why can't you ...
Encinia: I'm giving you a lawful order. I will tell you.
Bland: Why am I being arrested?
Encinia: Turn around!
Bland: Why won't you tell me that part?
Encinia: I'm giving you a lawful order. Turn around ...
Bland: Why will you not tell me what's going on?
Encinia: You are not complying.
Bland: I'm not complying 'cause you just pulled me out of my car.
Encinia: Turn around.
Bland: Are you fucking kidding me? This is some bull...
Encinia: Put your hands behind your back.
Bland: 'Cause you know this straight bullshit. And you're full of shit. Full of straight shit. That's all y'all are is some straight scared cops. South Carolina got y'all bitch asses scared. That's all it is. Fucking scared of a female.
Encinia: If you would've just listened.
Bland: I was trying to sign the fucking ticket -- whatever.
Encinia: Stop moving!
Bland: Are you fucking serious?
Encinia: Stop moving!
Bland: Oh I can't wait 'til we go to court. Ooh I can't wait. I cannot wait 'til we go to court. I can't wait. Oh I can't wait! You want me to sit down now?
Encinia: No.
Bland: Or are you going to throw me to the floor? That would make you feel better about yourself?
Encinia: Knock it off!
Bland: Nah that would make you feel better about yourself. That would make you feel real good wouldn't it? Pussy ass. Fucking pussy. For a failure to signal you're doing all of this. In little ass Praire View, Texas. My God they must have ...
Encinia: You were getting a warning, until now you're going to jail.
Bland: I'm getting a -- for what? For what?
Encinia: You can come read.
Bland: I'm getting a warning for what? For what!?
Encinia: Stay right here.
Bland: Well you just pointed me over there! Get your mind right.
Encinia: I said stay over here. Stay over here.
Bland: Ooh I swear on my life, y'all are some pussies. A pussy-ass cop, for a fucking signal you're gonna take me to jail.
Encinia (to dispatch, or an officer arriving on scene): I got her in control she's in some handcuffs.
Bland: For a fucking ticket. What a pussy. What a pussy. You're about to break my fucking wrist!
Encinia: Stop moving.
Bland: I'm standing still! You keep moving me, goddammit.
Encinia: Stay right here. Stand right there.
Bland: Don't touch me. Fucking pussy -- for a traffic ticket (inaudible).
(door slams)
Encinia: Come read right over here. This right here says 'a warning.' You started creating the problems.
Bland: You asked me what was wrong!
Encinia: Do you have anything on your person that's illegal?
Bland: Do I feel like I have anything on me? This a fucking maxi dress.
Encinia: I'm going to remove your glasses.
Bland: This a maxi dress. (Inaudible) Fucking assholes.
Encinia: Come over here.
Bland: You about to break my wrist. Can you stop? You're about to fucking break my wrist! Stop!!!
Encinia: Stop now! Stop it! If you would stop resisting.
Female officer: Stop resisting ma'am.
Bland: (cries) For a fucking traffic ticket, you are such a pussy. You are such a pussy.
Female officer: No, you are. You should not be fighting.
Encinia: Get on the ground!
Bland: For a traffic signal!
Encinia: You are yanking around, when you pull away from me, you're resisting arrest.
Bland: Don't it make you feel real good don't it? A female for a traffic ticket. Don't it make you feel good Officer Encinia? You're a real man now. You just slammed me, knocked my head into the ground. I got epilepsy, you motherfucker.
Encinia: Good. Good.
Bland: Good? Good?
Female officer: You should have thought about it before you started resisting.
Bland: Make you feel real good for a female. Y'all strong, y'all real strong.
Encinia: I want you to wait right here.
Bland: I can't go anywhere with your fucking knee in my back, duh!
Encinia: (to bystander): You need to leave! You need to leave!
(Bland continues screaming, but much of it is inaudible)
Encinia: For a warning you're going to jail.
Bland: Whatever, whatever.
Encinia: You're going to jail for resisting arrest. Stand up.
Bland: If I could, I can't.
Encinia: OK, roll over.
Bland: I can't even fucking feel my arms.
Encinia: Tuck your knee in, tuck your knee in.
Bland: (Crying): Goddamn. I can't [muffled].
Encinia: Listen, listen. You're going to sit up on your butt.
Bland: You just slammed my head into the ground and you do not even care ...
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Female officer: Listen to how he is telling you to get up.
Bland: I can't even hear.
Female officer: Yes you can.
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Bland: He slammed my fucking head into the ground.
Encinia: Sit up on your butt.
Bland: What the hell.
Encinia: Now stand up.
Bland: All of this for a traffic signal. I swear to God. All of this for a traffic signal. (To bystander.) Thank you for recording! Thank you! For a traffic signal -- slam me into the ground and everything! Everything! I hope y'all feel good.
Encinia: This officer saw everything.
Female officer: I saw everything.
Bland: And (muffled) No you didn't. You didn't see everything leading up to it ...
Female officer: I'm not talking to you.
Bland: You don't have to.
Encinia: 2547 county. Send me a first-available, for arrest.
Female officer: You okay? You should have Tess check your hand.
Encinia: Yeah, I'm good.
Encinia: She started yanking away and then she kicked me, so I took her straight to the ground.
Female officer: And there you got it right there... I'll search it for you if you want.
Female officer: Yeah.
Second male: I know one thing for sure, it's on video.
Female officer: Yeah.
Second male: You hurt?
Encinia: No.
Encinia (to female officer): Did you see her when we were right here?
Female officer: Yeah, I saw her cause that's where I (inaudible).
Encinia: This is when she pulled with the cuffs.
Paramedic: Your ring got you there?
Encinia: I had the chain, well, not the chain, but
Paramedic: You got the two loops?
Encinia: She didn't kick me too hard but she still kicked me though.
Paramedic: Not through the skin, but you got a nice scratch. I'm a paramedic, that's why I know.
Encinia: I know that, that's why I made you look.
Paramedic: Did she do that?
Encinia: Yeah that's her.
Paramedic: Yeah that's cut through the skin.
Encinia: I wrapped it around her head and got her down.
Encinia (on radio): This is a traffic stop, had a little bit of a incident.
(Silence for several minutes.)
Encinia (apparently to a supervisor): I tried to de-escalate her. It wasn't getting anywhere, at all. I mean I tried to put the Taser away. I tried talking to her and calming her down, and that was not working.
Well, I know, that was when she was in custody, and now I tried to get her detained and get her to just calm down and just calm down. Stop throwing her arms. You know what? She never swung at me, just flailing and stomping around. I said alright that's enough, and that's when I detained her.
There was something going on and she started kicking and kicking.
Yeah, and once I got her in the back of the car, that's why I'm calling you now, because ...
No, we were in the middle of a traffic stop and the traffic stop was not completed. I was just trying to get her out, over to the side and just explain to her what was going on because I couldn't even get her to do what I was telling her. She just started going this is an mf, and you give mf for a ticket and lane change, she just started going.
I just stepped back from the car and was like are you done ma'am? I need to tell you why and what I'm giving you and she just kept on going.
I mean, I don't have serious bodily injury (laughing) but I was kicked.
Assault is if a person commits an offense of intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury to another or you intentionally threaten another with bodily injury.
She's in the back of the car right now. She requested EMS. She said, she said I threw her down intentionally, for nothing. No, I put you down because you kicked me. You were fighting back. I kept telling her to calm down, calm down.
Evading arrest or detention. (Inaudible). Resisting arrest ... She was detained. That's the key and that's why I am calling and asking because she was detained. That's when I was walking her over to the car, just to calm her down and just to (say) stop.
That's when she started kicking. I don't know if it would be resist or if it would be assault. I kinda lean toward assault versus resist because I mean technically, she's under arrest when a traffic stop is initiated, as a lawful stop. You're not free to go. I didn't say you're under arrest, I never said, you know, stop, hands up.
Correct, that did not occur. There was just the assault part.
Like I said, after I got her all her situated and buttoned up as far as getting her in a safe vehicle, under arrest, that's why I'm calling you.
She just moved here, according to her, yesterday, she's from Illinois.
She gave me her driver's license. I came back to the car and started running her stuff. Print it out. Coming to get back to the car to complete and tell her what's she receiving and what to do and so forth.
At that time, she's still very much irritated and so forth. I'm pulling her over for she didn't turn on her signal and so forth and so forth.
She wouldn't even look at me. She's looking straight ahead, just mad.
I'm at the driver's side, I need to get her out of the car and over to the side of the car, you know, on the sidewalk, because I don't want to be in the middle of the road while we're arguing -- or whatever, not arguing, I'm trying to tell her what she's doing but she's arguing with me.
That's the only thing, I mean it too. When I had her down on the ground and the other officer came, I told her stop resisting and that's when I told her you're under arrest. At least I don't think I did.
Yes, she kicked me, she started yanking away and trying to get away. And that's when I grabbed her arm, she's in front of me still. I controlled, I grabbed her by the shoulders and I brought her down into the grass away from the pavement.
Like I said, with something like this, I just call you immediately, after I get to a safe stopping point.
No weapons, she's in handcuffs. You know, I took the lesser of the uhh … I only took enough force as I -- seemed necessary. I even de-escalated once we were on the pavement, you know on the sidewalk. So I allowed time, I'm not saying I just threw her to the ground. I allowed time to de-escalate and so forth. It just kept getting. (laughing) Right, I'm just making that clear.
I got some cuts on my hand, I guess that is an injury, but I don't need medical attention. I got three little circles from I guess the handcuffs when she was twisting away from me.
Over a simple traffic stop. Yeah, I don't get it. I really don't.
Why act like that, I don't know.
Another officer to Bland: Okay ma'am, you're under arrest. You're going to be transported to the Waller County Jail, OK? Alright.
Officer to officer: Alright brother, appreciate it.

Minor revisions and additions have been made to the initially published version of the transcript for accuracy and thoroughness.

[David Guyatt]

Love the bit where the two cops exchange a knowing comment:

Encinia: This officer saw everything.
Female officer: I saw everything.

When, of course, the female cop didn't appear on the scene - that I could see - until late in the game. For me, this exchange suggests collusion... whatever the first and arresting cop says in his report, cop 2 is going to back him up. He just asked her and she just agreed to do that. There follows a longer exchange for the benefit of the dashcam.

[Magda Hassan]

Do they think their charades are going to convince anyone? Suicide? Really? A woman who said "I can wait for this to go to court!" Obviously tampered video? Botched autopsy? Keeping the evidence from family? She was murdered by some small dicked small IQ male who felt his delicate white privilege was being threatened by some uppity black woman who didn't know her place and needed to be reminded to be submissive. A woman who knew her rights and when a police officer was over stepping their authority. Fuck them. Seriously. Some one has to pay for this crime. Not just the arresting officer. This is teamwork. Conspiracy.

[Peter Lemkin]

Gangs of the State: Police and the Hierarchy of Violence
Sunday, 19 July 2015 00:00 By Frank Castro, The Hampton Institute | News Analysis

Hierarchy of Violence: A system of oppression in which those with power, existing above those without, enact and enforce a monopoly of violence upon those lower on the hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is normal and is accepted as the order of things. When violence is attempted by those lower on the hierarchy upon those higher, it is met with swift and brutal repression.
December 15th, after the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos of the NYPD, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted "When police officers are murdered, it tears at the foundation of our society. This heinous attack was an attack on our entire city." On July 18th, the day after Eric Garner, a longtime New Yorker and father of six, waschoked to death by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, the mayor of of the Big Apple had only this to say: "On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Eric Garner."
In his condolences there was no mention of a "heinous attack" against the actual people of New York City. There was no mention of the "tearing at the foundation of our society" either. Still further, in the case for the police officers, de Blasio went as far as to use the word "murdered" long before a shred of evidence was provided. Yet in the face of video footage (that pesky thing called evidence) of Eric Garner's actual murder at the literal hands of an NYPD officer, de Blasio showed no "outrage", only platitudinous sentiment.
Such reactions are typical, but there is nothing shocking about them when we understand that our society operates on a clearly defined, yet often unarticulated, hierarchy of violence, and that the function of politicians and police is to normalize and enforce that violence. Thus, as an institution, police act as state-sanctioned gangs charged with the task of upholding the violent, racist hierarchy of white supremacist capitalism and, whenever possible, furthering a monopoly of power where all violence from/by those higher on the hierarchy upon those lower can be normalized into business as usual.
Any deviation from this business as usual, any resistance - the threat of force displayed in massive protests after Garner's death, or any displacement of state power whatsoever - by those lower on the hierarchy upon those higher is met with brutal repression. This is why cops are always present at protests. It is NOT to "Keep the peace." We have seen their "peace" - tear gas, rubber and wooden bullets, mace, riot gear, sound cannons, and thousands of brutal cops leaving dead bodies. They are not there for peace, but rather to maintain at all times the explicit reminder of America's power hierarchy through the brutalization of black and brown bodies above all others.
This is why de Blasio offered worthless platitudes to Eric Garner's family instead of outrage or solidarity. To him, as heinous as choking an unarmed black person to death is, it was business as usual.
Normalizing the Hierarchy of Violence
By framing this power dynamic as business as usual or "just how things are", it follows that the deployment of violence by police is always justified or necessary. This framing takes a myriad of forms almost always working in tandem to control how we think about the violence enacted by the state and its domestic enforcers, the police. Below are just a few of the tactics employed 24/7, 365 days a year.
Cop Worship and the Criminalization of Blackness. In this hierarchy of violence a cop's life matters infinitely more than a black person's life, and Americans, like NYC mayor Bill de Blasio, are expected to demonstrate sympathy with the lives of police officers. By contrast, Americans are encouraged to scrutinize and question the humanity of black and brown people murdered by police before questioning the lethal force used in otherwise non-lethal situations. This social reality illustrates how power is coordinated and wielded unilaterally, directed against the masses by a specialized minority within the population.
Police repression is framed in the mainstream media in such a way that when police commit violence against black and brown communities, it appears to white Americans as if they simply are protecting white communities from black criminality. This is the active dissemination of white supremacy. From it police accrue social capital and power within a conception of black bodies that perpetuates their dehumanization and murder. Completing the cycle, racist white Americans, after participating in the process of dehumanizing black people slain by police, then offer their sympathy, material support, and privilege to killer cops.
For example: George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson received over a million dollarsfor their legal defense funds. Both were either acquitted or not indicted by majority white juries. Officers Liu and Ramos of the NYPD, their families' mortgages are being paid. And thousands of other (white) officers are awarded paid time off (vacation) and non-indictments for what would otherwise be brutal crimes.
Ultimately, cops are praised because they enforce violence on behalf of the moneyed class. They protect existing power, wealth, and the right to exploit for profit, while simultaneously appearing to exist primarily for public safety. Straddling this paradoxical position, cops are worshiped because they are explicitly and implicitly attached to the rewards of privilege under capitalism.
Victim Blaming (Lynching the Dead). Seeking to justify hierarchical violence, the police collude directly with the mainstream media to exalt those who "uphold the law," while eroding the humanity of those whom have had their lives stolen by the police. Most often in the extrajudicial killings of black and brown people this has happened through a process of character assassination, or the process by which authorities and the media dredge up every possible occurrence of a "bad deed" of the victim's to discredit their innocence. It is effective considering dead people cannot defend themselves.
Erasure and Decontextualization. Time and time again police and the mainstream media will attempt to divert attention from the violence of the state by focusing on the retaliation of an oppressed group. This purposeful refocusing is a method of erasing the previous violence visited upon oppressed peoples in order to delegitimize any resistance to police domination. If those higher on the hierarchy can erase the history of those lower on the hierarchy, they effectively erase the oppression they themselves committed and make invisible the power they obtain from it.
We have seen this in the establishment's constant prioritization of defending private property over black and brown lives. As an example, after Mike Brown was slayed in the street by killer cop Darren Wilson the media headlined stories about "looting" instead of the fact that an unarmed 18-year-old child's life was snuffed out. The role of "looting" rhetoric served to remove the context of a white supremacist power structure, its history, and to allow for a game of moral equivalence to be played - one where property damage was as heinous as killing a black child.
In addition it served to usurp the fact that America's justice system has always been and continues to be racist. From its racist policing built on profiling, to its war on drugs which dis-proportionally incarcerates black (and brown) people, to itssentencing laws that increase in severity if you are black, to the fact that a black person is killed by cops or vigilantes every 28 hours. It is murderous and racist to its core, but the neither the mainstream media nor the state will ever admit it.
Narrative Restriction. To build off what Peter Gelderloos said in his piece The Nature of Police, the Role of the Left, discussions in America operate by fixing the terms of debate firmly outside any solutions to the problem. This happens by first establishing "fierce polemics between two acceptable "opposites" that are so close they are almost touching". Surrounding the national "discussion" about police terror, this has manifested as a polemic between "good cops" versus "bad cops". Second, encourage participants toward lively debate, and to third "either ignore or criminalize anyone who stakes an independent position, especially one that throws into question the fundamental tenets that are naturalized and reinforced by both sides in the official debate."
By creating a limited spectrum of discourse an ideological foundation is created for the hierarchy of violence. The end result is a set of normalized choices (reforms) which restrict or repress any competition an actual solution to the problem might bring. What is valued as acceptable within this limited spectrum then is only that which reflects the range of needs of those higher on the hierarchy of violence (reforms which gut radical resistance in order to maintain status quo power structures) and nothing more. In the current "discussion", the prevailing and unapproachable axiom is that the police represent protection and justice, and therefore they are a legitimate presence in our lives. Anyone who says otherwise is an agent of chaos.
This narrowing of the discourse never allows us to deconstruct the fact that policing in our society has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with punishment.
As Against Hired Guns put it, "Regardless of laws that claim we are all innocent until proven guilty, the results of wrongdoing and office referral, investigation and trial, always start and end in punishment. Our society takes this punishment as justice, and even though it is the nature of this system to attempt to prevent crime by deferment regardless of circumstance, many of us still cling to the idea that at its core the system means well. Many of us think to ourselves that aberrations of this are merely "bad apples" and we must expunge or punish them, but the reality is that this is not a unilateral system of justice at all. The police enforce a steady system of punishment on our streets, and punishment is specifically and intentionally directed at Black or Brown people."
The Law and the (In)Justice System. Institutions designed exclusively for punishment, primarily the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), expose the inability of a penal system to produce justice and the conditions for liberation. Here, the deliberately narrowed discourse concerned only with crime and punishment fabricates a perceived necessity for police that appears undeniable. This is an exploitative deception obscuring the socio-economic conditions that produce poverty and suffering within oppressed communities. On its own terms, the mechanisms of hierarchical violence fail to provide the resources and opportunities necessary for assimilation into a white supremacist capitalism. The ultimate limitation of capitalism is that it will always need an exploitable class of people to produce profit for an insignificantly small wealthy population.
The System Isn't Broken, It Was Built This Way
Since its formative days as an institution of slavery, policing in America has always been about the maintenance of this country's racist power structure. The major difference today has been an increased technological and military capacity for politicians, the media, and the police to march locked in step with each other in controlling the narrative we see. Politicians like Bill de Blasio still make laws informed by white supremacy. The police still enforce them through the same hierarchy of violence. The media still kowtows to the powered elite's depiction of violent oppression. And we the oppressed are still fighting for our liberation. Thus by now we ought to know that police, as the Gangs of the State tasked with the preservation of white supremacy and capitalism, can only be abolished by a movement which has correctly identified and been equipped with the tools to dismantle the hierarchy of violence.

[David Guyatt]

Do they think their charades are going to convince anyone? Suicide? Really? A woman who said "I can wait for this to go to court!" Obviously tampered video? Botched autopsy? Keeping the evidence from family? She was murdered by some small dicked small IQ male who felt his delicate white privilege was being threatened by some uppity black woman who didn't know her place and needed to be reminded to be submissive. A woman who knew her rights and when a police officer was over stepping their authority. Fuck them. Seriously. Some one has to pay for this crime. Not just the arresting officer. This is teamwork. Conspiracy.

Well said Maggie. That is precisely what happened. Justice will only be done if sufficient public rage occurs, otherwise it is evident this killing will be swept under the rug and forgotten.

It's quite unbelievable in this day and age with camera phones etc that police forces still think they can get away with activities like this. And I know that a lot of Americans will be backing the police in this too. The nation is doing downhill so fast now. Almost every day brings a new propaganda campaign or police killing etc. It's sickening to watch it.

[Magda Hassan]

Sandra Bland Was Murdered

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

25 July 15

Suicide or not, police are responsible for Sandra Bland's death

o news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas, have "full faith" that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said there was "no evidence of a struggle" on the body of the 28-year-old African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an alleged lane change violation.
In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's "courtesy policy." The state said there was "no evidence" yet of criminal behavior on Encina's part.
So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to play out in the media.
Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of suicide, questioning Bland's mental health history, and by highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.
Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching "legal analyses" concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on officer Encina's part, the law governing police-motorist encounters is too "complicated" to make this anything more than a tragic accident.
Media scandals are like criminal trials. They're about assigning blame. Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
Backing up: It's been interesting following conservative news outlets after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week, holstering the usual gloating backlash of the "He'd be alive today, if he'd just obeyed the law" variety.
After the Garner, Brown and Freddie Gray cases, of course, law-and-order commentators flocked to the blogosphere to explain the secret to preventing police brutality.
It was simple, they explained. There's no police corruption problem. The real issue is that there are too many people who don't know how to behave during a car stop. Don't want to get murdered by police? Be polite!
A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline "How to not get shot by police." After revealing that his only real experience in this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that "the first key to not getting shot" is to not think of the police as a threat:
"They're really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot you for no reason whatsoever. It's like a bee. Don't start swatting at it and chances are, it's not going to sting you.
"In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he can see them when he arrives, and you say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'"
It's hard to wrap one's head around the absurdity of someone like Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried using the word "sir" as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings. But over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real Clear crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing desperation in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these violent episodes.
After Eric Garner was killed, for instance, a New York Post columnist named Bob McManus argued that we should only blame the word "only" was actually used the "man who tragically decided to resist." Michigan's even dumber Ann Coulter wannabe, Debbie Schlussel, countered that Garner would still be alive if his parents had raised him better, and if he wasn't a "morbidly obese asthmatic."
After Ferguson, it was the same thing. Editorials insisted that the solution to the brutality problem lay in "less criminality within the black community." The officer who shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson the same guy who called Brown a "demon" insisted that Brown would still be alive "if he'd just followed orders."
But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive today, if only she'd used her blinker. That's a bridge too far even for TownHall.com types.
Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or arrest pretty much anybody at any time.
Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis. Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote her up. He didn't like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a little, asking her to put out her cigarette.
She balked, and that's when things went sideways. Encina demanded that she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, "I'll light you up," and eventually threw her in jail.
Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that a person may be arrested at any time for "failing to obey a lawful order," which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.
But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows and other "zero tolerance"-type enforcement strategies, police move into (typically nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off corners, and then circle back and arrest them for "loitering" or "failing to obey a lawful order" if they don't.
Some cities have tried to put a fig leaf of legal justification on such practices by creating "drug-free" or "anti-loitering" zones, which give police automatic justification for arrest even if a person is guilty of nothing more than standing on the street. Failing to produce ID even in the halls of your own building, in some cases or being seen in or around a "known drug location" can similarly be grounds for search or detention.
A related phenomenon is the policy governing "consent searches." Police stop people on the highways, in airports, on buses, really anywhere at all, and ask for their consent to search their property or their persons. Sometimes they do the asking with a drug-sniffing dog standing beside them.
Studies have consistently shown that black and Hispanic people are pulled over at a far higher rate than white people, usually more than double, even though white people are statistically more likely to have illegal drugs on them.
Add to this the whole galaxy of stop-and-frisk type behaviors, also known as "Terry stops," in which any police officer with an "articulable suspicion" that a crime of violence might be committed can pat down and question any person.
The end of New York's infamous program notwithstanding, there are millions of such stops every year. In Chicago, for instance, recent data showed a rate of about a million stops per year, with roughly 72 percent involving black people and this in a city that's only 32 percent black.
You add all this up, and we're talking about millions upon millions of stops, searches and misdemeanor arrests and summonses that clearly target black people at a far higher rate than the rest of the population.
And if you're continually handcuffing people, sitting on them, putting knees in their backs and dragging them to jail in cases when you could have just handed over a summons, a certain percentage of these encounters are going to end in fights, struggles, medical accidents and other disasters. Like the Bland case.
We'd call it murder if a kidnapping victim died of fright during the job. Of course it's not legally the same thing, but a woman dying of depression during an illegal detention should be the same kind of crime. It's especially true given our long and sordid history of overpolicing misdemeanors.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described how white America re-seized control after slavery by instituting a series of repressive "vagrancy laws," under which nonwhite Americans could be arrested for such absurdities as "mischief" and "insulting gestures."
In an eerie precursor to the modern loitering laws, many states even had stringent rules against "idleness." There were even states where any black male over 18 could be thrown in jail for not carrying around written proof that he had a job.
What exactly is the difference between being arrested for "idleness" and being arrested for "loitering in a designated drug-free zone"? What's the difference between an arrest for "mischief" and an arrest for "disorderly conduct" or "refusing to obey a lawful order"? If it's anything more than a semantic distinction, it's not much more of one.
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it can avoid getting killed by "respecting authority" and treating arresting cops like dangerous dogs or bees.
But while playing things cool might prevent killings in some instances, it won't stop police from stopping people without reason, putting their hands on suspects or jailing people like Bland for infractions that at most would earn a white guy in a suit a desk ticket. That's not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of incidents we never hear of.
That's why the issue isn't how Sandra Bland died, but why she was stopped and detained in the first place. It's profiling, sure, but it's even worse than that. It's a systematic campaign to harass people, using misdemeanors and violations as battering ram a campaign that's been going on forever, and against which there's little defense. When the law can be stretched to mean almost anything, obeying it is no magic bullet.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/...s-murdered

[Albert Doyle]

Your papers please!





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYDy9oRX2EA

[David Guyatt]

The Guardian newspaper has created a new website called Counted that is dedicated to the killing of citizens by US police.

According to Counted more people are killed by US police in a day that killed by police in England and Wales in a year. It's a quite startling fact. Also starling is the distribution of deaths between black, hispanics and whites that fairly evidently show that racism is a real factor. This year to date, deaths total 753.

The entire website is well worth reading imo.

[David Guyatt]

I'm copying Albert's Youtube clip from HERE to here:

[Peter Lemkin]

Cop who killed college student and 55-year-old mother sues for extreme emotional trauma' ::headbang::

By Peter Holley February 7

Janet Cooksey, left, is embraced at the funeral for her son Quintonio LeGrier in Chicago on Jan. 9. The shooting deaths of two black people LeGrier, a 19-year-old college student, and Bettie Jones, 55, a grandmother of 10 by a police officer in late December have increased tensions. (Joshua Lott/Reuters)
A Chicago police officer who fatally shot a college student and his 55-year-old neighbor has filed a lawsuit against the teenager's estate that blames the mentally ill 19-year-old for causing the officer "extreme emotional trauma."
Officer Robert Rialmo's lawsuit was filed Friday and offers the first public account of the moments before Rialmo shot and killed Quintonio LeGrier on Dec. 26. The suit claims that Rialmo, who was arriving at the scene of a domestic disturbance with another officer, opened fire after the teenager twice swung a bat at the officer's head and then raised the weapon a third time, leading Rialmo to fear that his life was in danger, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The round that killed LeGrier also killed 55-year-old Bettie Jones, a downstairs neighbor and mother of five who was standing near LeGrier and was not part of the disturbance that had drawn police to the residence. In an apologetic statement the next day, police confirmed that her death was accidental.
Rialmo is seeking $10 million in damages, according to the Associated Press.
"The fact that LeGrier's actions had forced Officer Rialmo to end LeGrier's life and to accidentally take the innocent life of Bettie Jones has caused, and will continue to cause, Officer Rialmo to suffer extreme emotional trauma," the filing says.

Funeral held for black grandmother killed by Chicago police

Play Video0:51



The family of Bettie Jones, 55, called for an end to secrecy around police misconduct cases at her funeral on Jan. 6. She was fatally shot in late December after police responded to a call about a neighbor's son. (Reuters)

[The Chicago shootings and why so many police calls involving the mentally ill end in death]
The suit comes at a time when public officials are grappling with questions about how the Chicago Police Department can earn back public trust, which has been eroded by a series of shootings and other incidents involving police misconduct.
The Justice Department has opened a wide-ranging investigation into whether the department's practices contribute to civil rights violations. The investigation was launched after the release of video in November showing white officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black. The footage led to murder charges for Van Dyke and the resignation of the city's police chief.
Rialmo's account differs sharply in key ways from claims made by LeGrier's father, Antonio LeGrier, who has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court. That suit which called the shooting "excessive and unreasonable claims the teenager "never had possession or control of a weapon" and "never posed a danger of threat or harm," according to the Tribune.
The suit claims that Rialmo was outside the two-story building when he fired his weapon but that the teenager was inside, the paper reported. LeGrier's suit also states that while his son lay on the ground bleeding to death, Rialmo "did not do anything to try to provide [him] medical care."
Antonio LeGrier's attorney, Basileios Foutris, told the AP that Rialmo's highly unusual suit which is a countersuit in the LeGrier case is "outlandish."
"After this coward shot a teenager in the back … he has the temerity to sue him?" he said. "That's a new low for the Chicago Police Department."
Rialmo's attorney, Joel Brodsky, told the Tribune that his client is going through a grieving process and that the lawsuit is an opportunity to tell the officer's side of the story. He said the presumption is that his client is at fault for the shooting.
"He's got this extra added burden [with] the death of Jones," Brodsky said. "He's going through what I would call the normal grieving process for someone who is forced to take a human life."
The suit states that Rialmo arrived at LeGrier's residence around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 26, according to the AP. After ringing the doorbell and being let in by Jones, the suit claims the officer stepped through the doorway and heard someone "charging down the stairway," according to the AP.
The suit states that LeGrier "cocked" the bat and that when he was downstairs he "took a full swing" at the officer, according to the Tribune. The suit states that the bat missed Rialmo's head by inches but was "close enough for Officer Rialmo to feel the movement of air as the bat passed in front of his face," the Tribune said.
The suit adds that the officer backed away from LeGrier and repeatedly commanded the teen to drop the bat, but that he continued to move forward and swung the bat again, according to the AP. After backing down the steps, the officer finally pulled out his 9mm handgun and fired, according to the suit, when LeGrier raised his bat again from three or four feet away.
"Rialmo reasonably believed that if he did not use deadly force against LeGrier, that LeGrier would kill him," the suit states, according to the Tribune. "Officer Rialmo drew his handgun from its holster, and starting to fire from holster level, fired eight rounds at LeGrier from his 9 mm Smith & Wesson handgun, which holds 18 rounds, in approximately two and a half seconds."
The suit adds that the "fourth round that Officer Rialmo fired passed through LeGrier and struck Bettie Jones, who unbeknownst to Officer Rialmo, was standing in the front doorway to the building … behind LeGrier and partially exposed to any gunfire that might pass through LeGrier."
An autopsy determined that LeGrier suffered six bullet wounds, according to the AP. Jones was killed by a single gunshot wound to her chest, according to the Tribune.
Lawyers for Antonio LeGrier and for Jones argue that evidence shows Rialmo was as far as 20 or 30 feet away when he fired his weapon, according to the AP.
Foutris told the AP that he's skeptical about the idea that LeGrier would attack police, considering he's the one who had called them to the residence in the first place.
"If you're calling multiple times for help, are you going to charge a police officer and try to hit him with a bat?" he said. "That's ridiculous."