I'll bet that most police officers hope that all encounters go as smoothly as this one appears to have gone. Sadly, this is not the case - and we have had an incident in the news as of late, where one driver apparently pulled over to let a police car go by, and it turned into an escalated incident where the driver was arrested, placed in jail, and found dead in her jail cell.
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As I read about Sandra Bland's incident with the police, I was appalled that the police department didn't bother to follow proper procedures in this case. And then, seeing the video of her arrest, I was further appalled by (what appears to be) a cop who was looking for an excuse to hassle a person, simply because he had a bug up his ass.
The initial incident could have been handled with much more diplomacy, if the police officer had been properly trained in tools of easing tension and had used those tools properly. Could you imagine if someone had been with her in the car and was carrying a legal handgun, as is common in Texas? Would there have been as much a commotion about a questionable death in a jail cell had someone in the car been armed?
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To me, Sandra Bland's arrest and later death was a crime, but what really did happen? I can not trust the police - the video seems to indicate that the police officer was being overly aggressive, while Bland was simply trying to exercise her rights. Does any police authority have the automatic right to arrest someone without telling that person why he/she is being arrested? Something is very wrong here. And to make things even worse, she died in the jail - with the autopsy showing results that could have been caused by a death other than suicide.
Thanks to the internet, we are finding out about much more abuse of power by police forces over the past year or two. And this is a good thing. When the police and government have lost the trust of the average person, authoritarianism can't be far behind. Let's pray that I am wrong about this....
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