By now, a second–and female–officer has arrived on the scene of the arrest of motorist Sandra Bland.
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 …
[Bland has already told both officers that (1) she is an epileptic, and (2) Encinia slammed her head into the ground. Now she is again putting them on notice that she could have sustained a traumatic brain injury. But neither officer shows any concern.]
Sandra Bland’s jail booking photo
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.
[After having her head slammed into the ground, Bland says she cannot hear. Both officers should consider that the injury to her head may be serious–and take her to an emergency room for evaluation.]
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.
[Since the female officer was not present when Encinia initially encountered Bland–as the video proves–she could not have “seen everything.” Her claiming to have done so could be seen as evidence that she intends to lie on Encinia’s behalf.]
Bland: And (mufled) 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.
[This is the last exchange between Bland and the officers as recorded on the dashcam video of Brian Encinia’s police cruiser.]
* * * * *
Born in 1987, Sandra Bland grew up in Illinois, and lived with her family in suburban Chicago.
She graduated Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Illinois, where she ran track and played volleyball. She was also a varsity cheerleader and part of the marching band.
She then attended Prairie View A&M University outside Hempstead, Waller County, Texas. She graduated in 2009 with a degree in agriculture.
Bland returned to Illinois in 2009.
In January 2015, she began posting videos on Facebook about police brutality against blacks.
In early July she traveled to Waller County, Texas, to begin a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M.
In one of her last conversations with her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland said:
“Momma, now I know what my purpose is. My purpose is to go back to Texas. My purpose is to stop all social injustice in the South.”
On July 13–three days after her arrest on July 10–Bland was found dead in her cell in Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas.
Sandra Bland memorial
Police claimed that she had hanged herself, citing a video she posted in Facebook in March, where Bland stated she was depressed.
Cannon Lambert, an attorney for the Bland family, said that at the time of Bland’s death, her relatives were raising money for Bland’s $5,000 bail. And Bland knew it.
“We don’t understand this,” said Lambert. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The Texas Rangers and the FBI are still investigating Bland’s death.
The Harris County medical examiner conducted an autopsy and ruled her death a suicide, claiming that it found no evidence of a violent struggle.
One possibility: Bland came to Texas to “stop all social injustice in the South.” She may have grown fatally depressed at her inability to “save herself” from jail over a simple traffic violation.
Another possibility: Texas authorities may have indulged in a long-cherished Texas tradition, best explained by a 19th-century Texas Ranger named Samuel Reid.
Reid served as a Ranger scout during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Recalling his experiences south of the border, he wrote:
“Our orders were most strict not to molest any unarmed Mexican.
“And if some of the most notorious of these villians were found shot, or hung up in the chaparral…the [United States] government was charitably bound to suppose that, during a fit of remorse and desperation, tortured by conscience for the many evil deeds they had committed, they had recklessly laid violent hands upon their own lives! Quien sabe?”
Meanwhile, Brian Encinia has been placed on administrative duties after the state Department of Public Safety found “violations of procedures regarding traffic stops and the department’s courtesy policy.”
