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Police agencies responding to protests last year in Ferguson, Missouri employed tactics that increased tensions between law enforcement and protesters, according to a draft report prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Service, known as COPS.
The report, which has not yet been issued, says the use of dogs, snipers, and tactical vehicles designed for the military "served to escalate rather than de-escalate the overall situation," NBC News has learned.
The COPS office is conducting a review of how police responded in the first 17 days after the fatal police shooting on August 9 of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown.
The office "will release the final after-action assessment in the coming weeks, which will convey the findings and lessons learned, following review by the agencies that are involved," said a Justice Department spokesman, who declined further comment on the initial findings.
The report says the use of canine teams for controlling crowds of protesters "is inconsistent with widely accepted policing practices and in fact exacerbated tensions by unnecessarily inciting fear and anger."
Deploying officers in tactical gear and the use of military-style vehicles also added to tensions, it says. "Armored vehicles should not be visible to protesters except in narrowly defined circumstances, for example when shots are fired."
The initial COPS findings say commanders failed to issue clear instructions to the variety of responding police agencies about lawful protest. Officers repeatedly told protesters to "keep moving."
As a result, protesters "were provided no clear alternative where they could gather in a zone and stand still."
The findings are being relayed this week to police officials in Ferguson, the city and county of St. Louis, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The agencies declined comment on the draft findings.
Brown was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who has since resigned. State and federal officials declined to prosecute him.
Soon thereafter, leaked documents revealed the Missouri National Guard used military language to describe protesters, dubbing them “enemy forces” and “adversaries.”
*wince* Those were the guys I thought would be better than the police.
This is why you see absurd situations where Cliven Bundy is a hero for threatening federal officials with deadly force, but if a store gets burned down during a protest all protestors are thugs.
Sixty-three percent of the public say that protesting unfair government treatment is always a good thing for the country
A third of our country doesn't like protesting? Love to know the context there.
The only rational explanation I see for why you would think protesting unfair treatment by the government doesn't improve the country is if you feel the people in question are being treated fairly.
Who thinks that? The Tea Party? The Occupy movement? Centrists would be most likely, but centrists aren't known for whack-a-doodle positions like "protesting doesn't help the country".
The only rational explanation I see for why you would think protesting unfair treatment by the government doesn't improve the country is if you feel the people in question are being treated fairly.
Who thinks that? The Tea Party? The Occupy movement? Centrists would be most likely, but centrists aren't known for whack-a-doodle positions like "protesting doesn't help the country".
It could. It could also be that you think protests always turn into riots. Or are a waste of time? And, of course, are people too smart for their own good, who immediately associate the question with current events they're opposed to. (Like me and bottled water question in the political leanings thread).
It appears the people being protested shouldn't throw their bottled water.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
The video shows the officers escorting the woman to the squad car. The teen follows. Rossi then turns his attention to the teen, asking if she is his mother. The teen initially says "yes," but then explains that his real mother is work. It turns out she was his stepmother.
Throughout the video, the teen speaks in a matter-of-fact tone, never using profanity with the officer.
Rossi threatens to take the teen downtown to speak to a detective if he doesn't talk with him.
"Then you're gonna go to a foster home," Rossi says in the recording. "I need to know what happened here, because right now, she's going to jail."
The teen asks why. Rossi responds that it's because she didn't listen to him.
The teen reiterates that nothing happened. Rossi asks the teen why she told him to shut up.
The teen responds: "She's telling you to shut up."
Raising his voice, Rossi then says: "No, she's telling you to shut up. I understand Spanish. OK, believe it or not, I went to school. I understand Spanish. I'm not stupid. So you want to lie to me, too? Look at me when you talk to me. OK, be a man."
The teen then tells the officer to remove his sunglasses and look him in the eye.
Clearly angered, Rossi leans in, telling the teen: "If I were you, son, I'd shut the f*** up, cause I'll break your f***ing neck. You understand me?"
Rossi tells the teen that he's under arrest.
The teen asks why, telling the officer not to touch him. The teen breaks free.
"I'm telling you right now, Get the f*** over here! Listen to me!" Rossi instructs the fleeing teen. "You're just like your mother. You're a piece of f***ing s***. You little [expletive]."
In Rossi's police report about the incident, he says the boy started to cry and he placed his arm around him to "console" him. The report did not mention that he had threatened the teen.
In his statement to internal investigators, Rossi said he was using "verbal judo" to try to get information from the teen. He said that telling him he would break his neck was a "verbal technique that I've used to try to calm down people or suspects in my career with no intention of ever meaning the words I say."
In a later statement to internal investigators, Rossi said he threatened to break the teen's neck because he had been rude with him, and he was trying to regain control of the scene. Rossi said he placed his arm around the teen "in a hugging manner." He denied entering false information on his report.
Thousands of New Yorkers accused of low-level or non-violent crimes won't face the prospect of raising cash for bail under a plan that seeks to keep such suspects out of the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.
The $18 million city plan, detailed to The Associated Press ahead of the announcement on Wednesday, allows judges beginning next year to replace bail for low-risk defendants with supervision options including daily check-ins, text-message reminders and connecting them with drug or behavioral therapy.
The $18 million city plan, detailed to The Associated Press ahead of the announcement on Wednesday, allows judges beginning next year to replace bail for low-risk defendants with supervision options including daily check-ins, text-message reminders and connecting them with drug or behavioral therapy.
*bzzzt, bzzzzzt*
NYC: Don't forget to show up at court for that drug charge. Wear something nice. TTYL xo
New York City reached a $5.9 million settlement Monday with the family of Eric Garner, whose death after he was placed in a chokehold by a police officer sparked a public outcry, officials said.
Stringer said that the settlement doesn't mean New York City has accepted liability for the death, but he believes the agreement "acknowledges the tragic nature of Mr. Garner's death while balancing my office's fiscal responsibility to the City."
GOD DAMMIT
NYT
Several inquiries into Mr. Garner’s death were still pending, including investigations by the United States attorney’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and state health officials, who are looking into the actions of emergency medical responders in treating Mr. Garner.
The Police Department has concluded its internal investigation but has yet to say whether any officers would be disciplined.
and in accepting the settlement the family is obviously just fine with that. Maybe we could start a reality program titled What is Your Family Member Worth to You? and each person in a given family can write in an amount and they can all try to guess how much in cold, hard cash they're worth to each other? No doubt it would be a smash hit.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
The city argued that the videos showed that Diaz Zeferino repeatedly ignored police commands and reached into his pockets and waistband area. But attorneys suing the city contended that the recordings showed a cold-blooded shooting of clearly unarmed men.
After settling the lawsuit, Diaz Zeferino’s family and the other men supported the request of The Times and other media groups, saying the videos should be released. Gardena contended that releasing the video would deter police from using such cameras and would endanger the safety of the officers at a time of heightened public criticism of police killings.
The Maryland appeals court has ruled that police departments' internal investigation documents are "personnel files" and thus exempt from public records requests. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Taleta Dashiell, who was seeking a copy of documents related to her own sustained complaint against Sgt. John Maiello of the Maryland State Police.
Further, mandatory disclosure of personnel information related to sustained findings could chill the disciplinary process, rendering those in control less willing to sustain a finding of misconduct.
One of the worst videos I've seen so far, probably only following the video where the cop calmly shot the guy in the back who was running away.
I have no idea why they opened fire on this kid. I know that they were the ones who actually called the police, hence the confusion, but did they think his hat was a lethal weapon?
Someone on another forum noted he was killed for having a bike. Also the cops escalated the situation from get-go – they could have just talked to him.
According to the lawsuit, after the concert began at 8 p.m., a performer at one point left the stage and went into the crowd, causing a "stampede" that knocked the teenager to the floor. Other concertgoers "trampled" her, triggering a seizure.
This caused the crowd to part around the girl, and her younger sister informed employees of Center Stage that she was suffering a seizure. The suit states an employee picked her up and carried her to the lobby, where she was "unceremoniously dumped" onto the floor and held with a chokehold.
The suit alleges the mother learned of her daughter's condition from the sister and came to the venue. When she arrived at the lobby dressed in a T-shirt and pajamas, the mother was "held down on the ground at five different points of her body" by police, then restrained to hold her wrists, hands and fingers immobile. After a police officer twice instructed another officer to "get her," an officer fired his Taser at the mother while she was restrained, causing her to urinate.
The Taser was also employed three times against the teenager, who was "face down with her arms secured behind her," the suit states. She temporarily lost consciousness and was taken to Gadsden Regional Medical Center, while the mother was arrested for disorderly conduct.
I'm sure a seizure is indistinguishable from 'resisting' or being 'uncooperative' to some cops. Yes, it's believable.
Here we go again. Routine traffic stop of a black female civil rights activist. Somehow she ends up face down on the ground in handcuff. The cops claim she became "combative". Shocking I know, She's arrested for assaulting a public servant this past Friday. By Monday she was dead in her jail cell. Cops claim she committed suicide. It wouldn't be the first time a black person has allegedly killed themselves in a southern jail for no apparent reason.
Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman driving from her old home near Chicago to a new job at her alma mater in Texas, never made it.
Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested her after they pulled her over for allegedly signaling a lane change improperly. She wound up on the ground, hands cuffed behind her back. That was Friday, July 10. On Monday, she was found dead in her Waller County jail cell. Her death is under investigation.
The police say Bland became combative at some point during the stop, and they charged her with assaulting a public servant. But a video of her arrest, shot by a bystander, starts only after Bland is already face down on the ground next to her car, saying police smacked her head.
"You just slammed my head into the ground, do you not even care about that?" she asks the officers holding her. "I can't even hear." You can watch the video, below.
One of the officers stands toward the beginning of the video, walks toward the videographer and tells him, "You need to leave." At the end of the video, as officers appear to lead Bland into the back of a police car, she thanks the videographer for recording.
Police say Bland died of "self-inflicted asphyxiation" on Monday morning, and an autopsy reportedly labeled her death a suicide by hanging. She was found at 9 a.m. local time, after police say they gave her breakfast at 7 a.m. and spoke to her over an intercom at 8 a.m.
"I do not have any information that would make me think it was anything other than just a suicide," Elton Mathis, the Waller County district attorney, told a local ABC affiliate in Chicago.
Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith used to be the police chief in Hempstead, Texas, until he was fired in 2008 for allegedly racist police tactics.
Bland's friends and family don't buy the suicide narrative.
In short, they wonder why a woman with such a close group of friends and family, who was about to start a new job, would kill herself. And plenty of Twitter users are questioning the same things.
When your community so rarely gets told the truth, you gotta know we just don't believe anything you tell us. We got common sense.
— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) July 16, 2015
#SandraBland was murdered
— Dr. Cornel Fresh (@WyzeChef) July 16, 2015
I need to go to bed, but I can't stop thinking about #SandraBland. She could have been any of us. Respectability cannot save you.
— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) July 16, 2015
Bland's death comes three months after Freddie Gray, a black Baltimore resident, was killed while in police custody there. Six officers were charged in connection with Gray's death after a bystander's video of that arrest emerged.
Were she alive, Bland would have started work at Prairie View A&M University on Wednesday, working in student outreach.
The Texas Rangers, who are part of the Texas Department of Public Safety, are overseeing the investigation. They didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
A change.org petition asking the Department of Justice to take over the investigation has already reached more than 18,000 supporters and is growing rapidly.
Not to downplay her death, but this is another case of cop fired for misconduct finding work elsewhere and citizens paying the price. Something needs to change there.
and here we go again with the allegations without any evidence, a common ritual with some around here. It's just as possible she found out she wasn't going to get her new job with the university, due to the likelihood she'd now be a felon or because she couldn't show up for work, and she killed herself. Until they release the contents of the phone call at 8am, we simply don't know.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
and here we go again with the allegations without any evidence, a common ritual with some around here. It's just as possible she found out she wasn't going to get her new job with the university, due to the likelihood she'd now be a felon or because she couldn't show up for work, and she killed herself. Until we know the contents of the phone call at 8am, we simply don't know.
That answers the suicide part, not the racism part.
That answers the suicide part, not the racism part.
There very well could be racism in the dept, I have no idea, but it's quite an assumption to say that her death was a racially motivated murder.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
The likelihood of her officially being a "felon" by Wednesday is just about nil. There's no way in hell she would have a trial that fast. It's a laughably stupid suggestion to say the least. As is the notion that a young woman would kill herself because she might miss the first day of work. It's highly unlikely she was being held without the possibility of bail given the nature of the charges.
But as I indicated, black people allegedly committing suicide under mysterious circumstances while in the custody of police in the south is nothing new ....
Alabama
An 18-year-old Alabama girl reportedly took her own life while being held at a local jail, AL.com reports.
Kindra Darnell Chapman was reportedly booked at Homewood City Jail Tuesday at around 6:22 p.m. on a first-degree-robbery charge for allegedly taking a cellphone from another individual. She was last seen alive at 6:30 p.m. Jailers found the 18-year-old a little under an hour and a half later, at 7:50, unresponsive. According to officials, Chapman used a bed sheet to hang herself.
The teen was taken to Brookwood Medical Center but was pronounced dead.
The news of Chapman's death broke the same day questions surrounding the myseterious death of a Texas inmate, Sandra Bland, began to circulate. Bland was in Texas for a new job when she was pulled over for a traffic stop and was later arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer, only to be later found dead from apparent asphyxiation. Officials said that her death was a suicide, but her family and friends refuse to believe that Bland took her own life.
Chavis Carter, the 21-year-old man found shot to death in an Arkansas police car with his hands cuffed behind his back, committed suicide, an autopsy showed.
Carter was sitting in the backseat of a Jonesboro police cruiser on July 28 when he put the barrel of a handgun against his right temple and pulled the trigger "despite being handcuffed," the report said, according to The Associated Press.
"At the time of discharge, the muzzle of the gun was placed against the right temporal scalp," the report said.
The bizarre death drew scrutiny to the Jonesboro police department, who said two officers frisked Carter twice but never found the .380-caliber Cobra handgun found near his body.
You're right, it's more likely just run-of-the-mill police brutality murder, if it did happen.
That's the key word, right there.
However in either case, she probably ended up dead because someone wasn't enforcing the law but enforcing their biases.
Complete conjecture, it's just as likely a suicide at this point.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
The likelihood of her officially being a "felon" by Wednesday is just about nil. There's no way in hell she would have a trial that fast. It's a laughably stupid suggestion to say the least. As is the notion that a young woman would kill herself because she might miss the first day of work. It's highly unlikely she was being held without the possibility of bail given the nature of the charges.
But as I indicated, black people allegedly committing suicide under mysterious circumstances while in the custody of police in the south is nothing new ....
All hyperbole at this point, but don't let the lack of proof stop you. I know it's against your nature, but maybe wait until there's an actual investigation before assigning guilt this time?
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
A young woman with good relations with family and friends. Starting a new job in a new city in a matter of days. Pulled over for allegedly signaling a lane change improperly. The mother of all BS traffic citations. Handcuffed and arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Bond was set at only $5000. Then all of a sudden ... "Goodbye cruel world! I might miss work on Wednesday!".
The family of a 28-year-old woman found dead in a Texas jail say it's "unfathomable" that she would have killed herself, and want more information from investigators who ruled her death a suicide.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Sandra Bland, a civil rights advocate, has come under scrutiny on social media — leading her family to hold a news conference Thursday pleading for answers.
Bland was arrested during a routine traffic stop Friday, July 10, in Waller County, northwest of Houston, and taken into custody on a charge of assaulting a public servant, officials said. The incident was apparently captured on cellphone video.
Then, on Monday morning, Bland was found hanging in her jail cell, according to the Waller County Sheriff's Office. An autopsy has said she died from apparent "self-inflicted asphyxiation."
But Bland had just moved back to the Houston area from suburban Chicago to start a job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University, her family said.
"Sandy's mental state was that she was a 28-year-old beautiful woman, with family that loved her to death and friends that loved her to death, and she was going to take a new job," attorney Cannon Lambert Sr. said during the news conference.
Bland's sister, Sharon Cooper, rejected the notion that she would have harmed herself, and said that those who "knew the depths of her, the core of her (know that) that's unfathomable right now."
Shante Needham, another sister, said Bland called her from jail Saturday to say her bond was $5,000 and that she was also worried the arresting officer may have fractured her arm.
"She was very aggravated," Needham said.
Court records from Friday show Bland was arrested for assault on a public servant, a third-degree felony. She had a court appearance Saturday, where her bond was set at $5,000.
"We're required to check them every hour, 24/7," Sheriff R. Glenn Smith told NBC Chicago. "[On Monday] she was given breakfast and spoken to, at about 7 in the morning. At 8, she spoke to a supervisor on the intercom about making a phone call."
"One of the female jailers went to the door to see if she wanted to go to the rec yard," he said. "She hollered for help, they started CPR. And unfortunately, couldn't revive her."
Complete conjecture, it's just as likely a suicide at this point.
You missed my point – whether murdered by police or dead by her own hand, she'd be alive if she hadn't been pulled over on what seems like a spurious traffic violation we all know the system is rife with. Much like that teen who committed suicide because he was held without bail for 6 months on Riker's.
Rossi was in the shower when her daughter told her the two officers were at the door. She said she was wearing only a towel when she raced to the door.
Rossi said officer Doug Rose was nice -- at first. But the situation began to deteriorate.
“I said, 'You know what? You're making me very uncomfortable. I'm gonna get my daughter to record what’s happening because something’s not right here,'" Rossi recalled.
The mother closed the door and went to get her 15-year-old daughter. That's when she heard “boots” behind her.
"He said, 'If you take another step forward I’m going to arrest you,'" Rossi said.
The cellphone video captures Rossi screaming, pleading with the officer not to touch her. You can hear her begging to be allowed to put some clothes on.
Rossi said her towel fell, exposing the front of her naked body. She said tried to cover herself, but Rose would not allow her to. She said he forced her to look him in the eyes.
She said the other officer stood by and did nothing.
A few minutes later, the officers left without taking Rossi into custody.
Before the investigation was submitted to Rose’s chain of command, he retired from the police force.
A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper pulled Bland over on Friday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. near Prairie View A&M after Bland changed lanes without signaling, according to Trooper Erik Burse, a spokesman for the Public Safety Department.
The trooper ordered her out of the car because she was argumentative and uncooperative, he said, adding that she was about to be issued a written warning when she kicked the trooper who had pulled her over. At that point, she was arrested and charged with assault on a public servant.
Friday's incident was not the first time Texas police had stopped her while she was driving. According to Waller County records, she was cited for driving without a seat belt in June 2009, and then for speeding in November of the same year.
In Harris County, she was arrested in May 2010. Harris County court records show she was charged with driving under the influence and for possessing a small amount of marijuana. The DWI charge was later dismissed and she spent 30 days in jail for the possession charge. She was also charged in 2009 with possessing drug paraphernalia, for which she received a deferred adjudication.
Okay, I think I've moved from 'possible' to 'doubtful' on the police misconduct scale regarding the case.
Sandra Bland used Facebook as a diary of sorts. She would post stream of consciousness videos on a variety of topics from going natural with her hair to the Black Lives Matter movement. She called the videos "Sandy Speaks." She called her viewers "kings and queens." Some five months before she would be found dead in a Texas jail cell, she posted a video apologizing to her friends for having been absent from posting for a while.
"I'm suffering from something that some of you all may be dealing with right now. It's a little bit of depression, as well as PTSD," she said in the Facebook video from March 1.
She added in the post that she had been stressed out the past couple of weeks, but also noted, "That does not excuse me not keeping my promise to you all by letting you know that someone cares about you, that someone loves you and that you can go out there and do great things."
The 28-year-old Illinois woman died in police custody in what police have claimed was suicide by asphyxiation, but her family and friends don't believe she would have killed herself.
As the story of what led to Bland's death continues to unfold, the Daily Beast reports that she made a call to a bail bondsman and her sister while she was in custody.
"I talked to her when she first went to jail," bondsman Joe Booker of Hempstead, Texas, told the Daily Beast. "I called her mother for her."
Although Bland's bail was listed as $5,000, with the help of a bail bondsman she would have only needed to pay 10 percent of that—$500—to be released from jail.
During an emotional press conference, Bland's sister Shante Needham told reporters that she had planned to bail her sister out.
"She informed me she had been arrested. She said they couldn't tell her what she had been arrested for until an hour before she had called," Needham said.
"She then proceeded to say the officer had put his knees in her back and that she thought her shoulder was broken. She said her bond was $515. And I told her that I would work on getting her out."
The video and phone calls are the newest pieces in the puzzle to determining exactly what happened to Sandra Bland.
"That is, of course, extremely relevant that she may have been suffering from some sort of mental illness," Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis told ABC 7.
"That self-diagnosis is certainly something that we are going to look at and consider with a motive for a suicide," he said.
But Bland's family doesn't believe that she would have committed suicide.
"Based on the Sandy I know, that's unfathomable to me," Bland's sister Sharon Cooper said at a press conference.
What I find really odd about this entire situation is that while the local authorities have ruled Bland's death a "suicide by by asphyxiation" they have yet to state asphyxiation by what. Bed sheets? Belt? Shoe laces? Also, as has been noted earlier her older sister spoke to her that morning and assured her she was going to bail her out. We are talking 500 bucks here. And while the local authorities are jumping all over a Facebook post from 5 months earlier ... at the end of the day "depressed" does not necessarily mean "suicidal".
You missed my point – whether murdered by police or dead by her own hand, she'd be alive if she hadn't been pulled over on what seems like a spurious traffic violation we all know the system is rife with. Much like that teen who committed suicide because he was held without bail for 6 months on Riker's.
I don't see the parallel between the two cases, one night doesn't equal 6 months (which is a terrible miscarriage of justice). I want to see the autopsy report on her alleged injuries caused during the arrest and the report regarding what they believe was the implement that caused the asphyxiation.
Regarding her arrest itself, the police had no idea she suffered from depression, you can't blame the system for her death if simply being incarcerated led to her killing herself, that's an absurdly unreasonable response to something so small that $500 can get taken care of (at least in the interim). I do know this, however, truly depressed people, when it's active, seldom can be reasoned with. It's as if the world is crumbling around them and there's no escape.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
I don't see the parallel between the two cases, one night doesn't equal 6 months
Right, but there's no accounting for mental stability.
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
Regarding her arrest itself, the police had no idea she suffered from depression, you can't blame the system for her death if simply being incarcerated led to her killing herself
If the arrest is lawful, they are not at fault. If the arrest was BS, yes they get assigned a portion of the blame.
Are they mindreaders? Telepathic/empathic abilities aren't prerequisites for being a LEO. It comes down to, "did she hit the cop?". If she did, then being arrested is a matter of course.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
Are they mindreaders? Telepathic/empathic abilities aren't prerequisites for being a LEO. It comes down to, "did she hit the cop?". If she did, then being arrested is a matter of course.
I'd beter add in now, lest I be accused of something unsavory, that the description of edits and the integrity of the audio seems to indicate some kind of glitch, rather than an overt attempt to doctor the video.
I'm updating my laptop to the second public beta of El Capitan right now and I simply refuse to do extensive posts on my iPhone since we still don't have a proper mobile version of the site. So when it's done I'll post a link to the arrest video. But suffice it to say now that it reflects what I've been saying all along. Some people simply don't have the TEMPERAMENT to be police officers. This asshole asked her why she seemed "irritated". She answered his question and said she changed lanes in order to get out of his way because he was coming up behind her at a high rate of speed (which he did as the dashcam clearly shows). But he stopped her anyway. Apparently he didn't appreciate her giving him an honest answer. Then he asks her to put her cigarette out and she asked him why she had to put out the cigarette when she was in her own car. And things went all the way to the left from there. He IMMEDIATELY got angry and demanded that she get out of the car. Snatched her door open. Threatened her with a taser. Said she was under arrest. REFUSED repeated requests to say WHY she was under arrest for a good 15 minutes. Demanded that she stop video recording him ... which she did. Manhandled her to the ground outside of the dashcam view (which I believe was intentional). Said he was arresting her for "resisting arrest". Huh? Did I mention he never said why he was arresting her in the first place? Tells the bystander also recording that he needed to leave. The guy didn't and said he was in the public sidewalk. And THEN after all that he claimed that she tried to elbow him even though she was already in handcuffs. And she supposedly kicked him in the leg. NONE of which is shown on the video because he took her out of view. But we can hear audio of her complaints of his treatment of her in real time. And yeah she talked about him the entire time. And while that wasn't WISE ... she certainly wasn't WRONG in her excoriation of him.
UPDATE:
The original dash cam in its entirety ...
As you can see when the trooper asked Ms. Bland why she was "irritated" she gave a very direct and perhaps blunt answer but she was by no means "combative". Clearly it was the trooper who escalated the situation unnecessarily. Let's keep it all the way real here. The trooper's intent was to give her a written warning ... but he was so emotionally volatile that he went from 0 - 100 in half a second because she dared to be "irritated" that he pulled her over for failing to signal her lane change when he was the one rolling up behind her like a bat out of hell. As she stated ... she was just trying to get out of his way. And then when she questioned why she had to put out her cigarette in her own car ... well apparently that was really "a bridge too far". IOW ... he didn't like her attitude so he decided to yank her door open, threaten her with a taser, snatch her out of the car, manhandle her to the ground, arrest her, and then come up with a reason for the arrest after the fact. All because he f*cking could. And don't even get me started on this notion that she hung herself with a freaking plastic trash bag a few hours before her family was going to bail her out when she stated repeatedly that she couldn't wait to deal with this trooper in court. Now let the excuse-making for this trooper's unprofessional behavior at best and illegal behavior at worst begin.
She's arrested for assaulting a public servant this past Friday. By Monday she was dead in her jail cell. Cops claim she committed suicide. It wouldn't be the first time a black person has allegedly killed themselves in a southern jail for no apparent reason. 
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