Texas police have released video taken from inside the county jail during the last minutes of Sandra Bland’s life as activists claimed that the traffic stop that led to her imprisonment escalated into a confrontation because a trooper was angry that she was smoking.
The footage is three hours long but does not provide a clear view of cell 95 at the Waller county jail, where officials say the 28-year-old was found hanged on 13 July, three days after she was arrested for alleged assault on a public servant.
The camera is motion-activated and stops recording after 15 seconds without detectable movement, according to authorities, meaning there is more than nine minutes of time unrecorded. The inside of cell 95, at the end of a hallway and in the top right corner of the picture, is not visible. Officials said that the tape showed there was no movement down the hallway to Bland’s cell for the 90 minutes prior to her body being discovered.
Brian Cantrell of the Waller county sheriff’s office said that at 7.05am Bland was “in good health” and told the jailer “I’m fine”. At 7.55am, he said, she contacted a controller via a phone in the cell to ask if she could make a phone call.
At 8.58am, he said, an officer went to the cell to ask if she wanted to go to the recreation hall. She was found partially hanging from the privacy partition, next to the toilet, “in a semi-standing position with the ligature around her neck” and her feet on the ground. Officers then placed her on the floor, performed CPR and sought emergency medical help, Cantrell said. Several are shown hurriedly walking to and from the cell.
Cantrell said the cause of death was “self-inflicted asphyxiation” with an ordinary plastic trash bag. He said that in the wake of Bland’s death all trash bags had been removed from the jail’s cells.
https://twitter.com/stjbs/status/623467875035033600
Apparently, BLACK PEOPLE in AMERIKKKA don’t fit the billing for upstanding, well-dressed, well-educated, follow-the-white-man’s-laws, THEY STILL GET MAIMED, MURDERED, DENIGRATED, for being BLACK
And, when victims don’t receive justice and cover-ups are allowed, the message is that the justice system is going to allow the killing to continue.
If ever protest and push back is needed against this dire situation, it is NOW!
Why #BlackLivesMatter Can’t be Diluted, White People
Posted on July 20, 2015 by Milt Shook
I can’t believe I have to say this again. I mean, I’ve already explained “white privilege,” primarily because too many white people (and yes, I include a lot of white liberals in this group, I’m sad to say) think they know everything and never take the time to actually listen to what black people have to say. They think that, because they have a college education and perhaps took a couple of sociology courses, they understand the “black experience.”
No you don’t. You can’t. I can’t, you can’t; no white person can understand it. Therefore, it’s really important to sit the hell down and shut the hell up and listen. Even if you can’t understand everything, you can at least learn to empathize. If you’re white and you don’t think you have white privilege, you are blind and you need to re-take that college course. No, forget that; open up your eyes and ears and observe, and listen to what black people tell you about it. If you’re on Facebook and/or Twitter, you either don’t have any black friends or you don’t read anything they say. Of course, you can also look at the hashtag, #blacklivesmatter and read what random black people say about it, and you might learn something.
The fact that you “mean well” simply accounts for jack shit, got it? You have to DO well, too. And doing well for our black brothers and sisters often means shutting the hell up and listening to black people when they try to speak to you. The #Blacklivesmatter campaign is very important for everyone, not just black people. However, you might have to clear your mind and listen for a change.
The point they’re trying to make with that hashtag is that, right now, black lives are simply not very important in our society. You can’t even argue that point; by any objective standard, black lives are not considered valuable. There is a whole ideology — and right now, it runs Congress — that dismisses everything about black people and turns it into a caricature. If you read the rhetoric that comes from many white liberals, they’re only a bit better than the right wing; they act as if black people are helpless without us, and they need our help in order to make it in society, which is pure bullshit. They don’t need us! We ALL need EACH OTHER. We’re a society and community, for Chrissakes; we are all participants in this society and we all leane on one another to make it through this life
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/why-blacklivesmatter-cant-be-diluted-white-people/
No you don’t. You can’t. I can’t, you can’t; no white person can understand it. Therefore, it’s really important to sit the hell down and shut the hell up and listen. These are the words white folks need to hear!!
Rikyrah I feel like screaming and clapping at this comment it is right on point. We can not be eliminated therefore we have to find a way to get along and the only way we can make some kind of head way is to listen and hear. Because white folks don’t want to hear shit.
https://twitter.com/marabout40/status/623201499104047104
https://twitter.com/marabout40/status/623201753866051584
https://twitter.com/marabout40/status/623203323521449984
https://twitter.com/marabout40/status/623204147140104192
Whew! So scary!
https://twitter.com/SincerelyAJ1983/status/623308821897687040
andrea grimes @andreagrimes
“it was not a model person that was stopped on a traffic stop” — Waller County DA, victim blaming Sandra Bland https://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/20/sandra-blands-death-now-murder-investigation/ …
Black men and now Black women are being MURDERED exponentially to the detriment of our families under the guise of protecting the Klan office, posing as law enforcement.
WE NEED ACTION NOW!
It is not easy to kill yourself with a plastic bag unless you are intoxicated or something. Just as your can’t choke yourself with your own hands. Natural instincts will stop you.
Powerful message….so tragic….
The cruel ABSURDITY of it ALL.
New Details Released in #SandraBland’s Death in Texas Jail
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Family-of-Sandra-Bland-requests-independent-6395059.php
HEMPSTEAD – With new questions being raised into the arrest and death of Sandra Bland, Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said Monday that his office has not determined a cause of death for the woman who was found hanging in a cell in the Waller County Jail.
Her death was initially ruled a suicide by medical examiners.
“This is being treated like a murder investigation,” Mathis said at a news conference, explaining that he has requested scientific testing from items at the jail, including touch DNA evidence on the plastic trash bag that officials earlier said Bland used to kill herself.
Earlier in the day, outside the Waller County Jail, advocates for Bland’s family said dash-cam footage of her traffic stop on July 10 in Prairie View contradicted an account by the Texas Department of Public Safety. They also called for the Department of Justice to investigate the case.
The Waller County Sheriff’s Office said it, too, is continuing its investigation, separate from the one led by the Department of Public Safety and the FBI.
The motion-triggered jail footage confirms a timeline of the morning offered by officials throughout the investigation of her death: she was checked on by a jailer around 7 a.m., called the supervisor via intercom around 8 a.m. to ask for help placing a call from the phone in her cell, and found less than an hour later by a jailer sent to ask if Bland would like recreation time.
On the video, a female officer peers through the window of the cell at 9:07 a.m. and is then shown running toward the main booking floor where she grabs a fellow officer and leads him to Bland’s cell, using his radio to ask the controller to open the cell. Several other officers enter the cell as CPR is administered, according to the sheriff’s office. At 9:13 am, EMS can be seen entering the jail and, a minute later, Bland’s cell. At 9:17, the paramedic and EMS are seen leaving the cell, Bland having been declared dead.
Mathis said the video hasn’t been verified by the FBI, which is checking if it had been edited.
Yep, they definitely need to see if it has been edited.
Wow. Wonder what that is about?!
http://www.wallertexas.com/images/council-photos/chief-rehak-small.jpg
Phil Rehak
Chief Of Police
Yep, a big, bad, gun-toting red neck coward.
All hat, no cattle as the southern folks say.
Not good enough.
They can’t keep murdering black people for sport and then choose to retire of their own volition, and with full benefits to avoid being held accountable…
That is not justice.
Sandra told the officer who pulled her over that she was recording him. LE has her phone.
We need to have her recording released. Let’s see that footage.
The campus police of Prairie View A&M are from the Department of Public Safety as shown by this patch that they wear:
https://i0.wp.com/www.pvamu.edu/images/DPS%20Pictures/patch.jpg
The maps provided in this NY Times article link show that Sandra Bland was stopped for “an illegal” turn signal about 2 blocks from the Prairie View A&M campus:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/20/us/sandra-bland-arrest-death-videos-maps.html?_r=0
The officer who stopped her was from the Department of Public Safety according to this NY Times article.
Excerpt:
Could it be that this officer was a member of the campus police and had followed her from the campus?
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sandra-bland-familys-lawyer-details-dashcam-footage-her-arrest-n395126
I can’t imagine the terror Sandra Bland felt in that cell with no one to help. It’s so disturbing to my soul.
It must have been horrific for her….. a terrible nightmare!
My heart has not stopped grieving for her.
So much light in Sandra’s being, and it was snuffed out by sheer HATE.
Sandra’s death had better be TREATED AS A MURDER.
They already called it a suicide! Now all of a sudden there an investigation! Just fucking wow. These cops have been trained to believe that they will get away with whatever they want. That good Ole boy network is strong. But it’s not just the white cops, it’s a culture. They are trained to look at all of us as the enemy. Cops scare the Fuck outta me.
Short: ‘That Niggra girl didn’t NOW HER PLACE., so we’ll put her in it.’
I.can’t.with these.racist.PIGS.
Yup!
Showing their face. They can’t help it. It burns them that they can’t whip, rape and torture legally anymore. So they become LE so the torture can continue, but now, under the nice cover and protection of the government. Isn’t it nice to see progress??