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Sandra Bland. Husk navnet hvis du kan. Hun er kun den seneste i en tiltagende, offentlig kendt liste af amerikanske borgere der enten er blevet fysisk misbrugt eller myrdet af amerikasnk politi for at modet til at 'udfordre' deres 'autoriteter'.

Den 10 Juli 2015, var Sandra Bland nys ankommet til Prairie View, Waller County, Texas, for at starte på et nyt arbejde på hendes gamle læreanstalt, A&M universitetet, historisk kendt sort skole 40 mil nordvest fra Houston. Texas er blevet beskrevet som den mest racistiske stat i USA, og Waller County den mestracistiske county i Texas. Race adskillelse her er blot en måde livet er på, bogstaveligt talt; kirkegårde i Waller county er opdelt mellem sorte og hvide, med betydeligt flere midler rettet mod vedligeholdelse af hvide gravpladser.

Mens hun kørte i Prairie View den dag, vinkede Waller County betjenten Brian Encina, der ikke havde noget bedre at gøre end at chikanere bilister over mindre trafik 'forseelser' der ingen fare udgjorde, Bland til side for ikke at have indikeret vejbane ændring.

Politiets dashcam video fra mødet viser at fra start, at Bland udtrykte irritation over at være blevet stoppet og fået uddelt en bøde uden nogen egentlig grund. Hun var dog fuldt ud samarbejdsvillig med betjenten indenfor de nødvendige rammer, i at give ham hendes kørekort og registrerings papirer da hun blev spurgt. Da Encina bemærkede Bland's irritation spurgte han på falsk vis "hvad er der galt?" Dette var Encina's første fosøg på at intimidere Bland, og hun var ikke i humør til at spille underdanig og fortalte ham hvorfor hun var irriteret. Betjenten gjorde det klart at hans spørsmål ikke havde været ægte ved at spørge "er du færdig?"

Det afgørende øjeblik i mødet skete da Encina bad Bland slukke hendes cigaret. Bland nægtede, og erklærede at det var hendes bil og hendes rettighed at ryge i den hvis hun skulle have lyst og at betjenten ikke havde beføjelser at kræve noget sådant. To retfærdige udfordringer til hans magt var alt denne opspændte autoritært indstillede mand kunne tage og krævede Bland stod ud af bilen. Bland fortsatte med at holde på hendes rettigheder ved at nægte og spurgte gentageligvis hvorfor det var påkrævet at hun skulle.
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Sandra Bland
Her falder betjenten tilbagepå hans uddannelse, der lærer amerikanske politi at råbe basale befalinger af 'mistænkte', indtil de samarbejder. "Jeg giver dig en lovlig ordre," råber Encina gentageligvis til Bland's spørgsmål. Selvfølgelig var hans ordre overhovedet ikke lovlige. Encina's uddannelse lærte ham at når borgere ikke adlyder poiltiets råbte ordre skal de fysisk overmandes til det. Da Encina's forsøg på at hive Bland ud af bilen mislykkedes, peger betjenten sin taser af kvinden og skreg, "Jeg tænder dig op! Stå ud nu!"Så står Bland ud af bilen.

Bland fortsatte med at udfordre Encina's behandling, og på et tidspunkt siger hun: "Jeg kan ikke vente til vi kommer i retten, åh jeg kan ikke vente!" og "Vil du have mig til at sidde ned nu eller vil du smide mig i gulvet? Vil det få dig til at få det bedre med dig selv? Bland kaldte også betjenten gentageligt en "fej strømer" (pussy-ass cop) for at have trukket hende til side for ikke at have vist af. Med kvindens hænder i håndjern bag ryggen smide Encina hende til jorden, og hans knæ i nakken på hende, fordi hun 'fortrak sig' fra ham. Bland høres råbe til Encina: "Du har lige smækket mit hovede i jorden! Betyder det ikke noget for dig?" Bland fortalte også betjenten at hun havde epilepsi, til hvilket Encina svarede, "godt".


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In the video Encina can be heard explaining the situation to a colleague and admitting that, "she never swung at me but she was stomping around and that's when I detained her." He also claims that Bland kicked him. But Encina failed to recognize that it was Bland's refusal to put out her cigarette and his aggressive attempts to get her out of her car that led to her "stomping around". During this conversation the trooper also lies when he states that he told Bland she was under arrest after he threw her to the ground. The dash-cam video shows that he told her she was under arrest immediately after she refused to put out her cigarette and get out of the car.

If you've watched the dash-cam video, you may be wondering why Bland was so combative. First, it's not a crime to be pissed off at a cop for arbitrarily pulling you over, although it is inadvisable in the burgeoning police state that is the USA. Secondly, Bland had been actively involved in the 'Black Lives Matter' campaign in her home state of Illinois and regularly posted videos to her Facebook page where, among other things, she discussed police mistreatment of blacks. So it could be said that she was primed for the confrontation with Encina, which is not to condemn her attitude, nor excuse Encina's.

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Bland was taken to Waller County jail and placed in a cell for three days for "assaulting a public servant". Bail was set at $5,000. After her arrest, Bland called her sister and told her that she feared her arm was broken. A Houston television station, KTRK-TV, stated that it obtained a voice message left by Bland for her friend LaVaughn Mosley after her arrest. In the message, Bland calmly says she's, "still just at a loss for words honestly at this whole process" and wonders, "How did switching lanes with no signal turn into all of this?"

Death by Marijuana Plastic Bag Suicide While Standing

But the real questions here are why Bland was imprisoned at all. Why wasn't she taken to a police station, charged and then released with a date for a court hearing? Why was she placed in a cell on her own rather with other detainees? Capt. Brian Cantrell of the Waller County Sheriff's Office has stated that she was placed in a cell alone because she was deemed a "high risk" to the safety of others based on the nature of the charge against her. As we have seen however, the charge against her - "assaulting a public official" - is entirely bogus as it relates to Bland's possible threat to other inmates. Bland was justifiably angry at the trooper; for anyone to suggest that this translates to her being a danger to other civilians is an obvious manipulation to justify placing Bland in a cell on her own.

According to Bland's sister, Sharon Cooper, parts of the police report from the time she entered the jail have been redacted. A copy of the questions asked of Bland when she was booked at the jail was obtained by CBS News. The hand-printed document shows Bland confirming she had previously attempted suicide due to a miscarriage. A typed summary of Bland's responses however shows the response to "Attempted suicide?" as "no." The reason for the discrepancy is unclear. An inmate with a previous suicide attempt is routinely put on suicide watch and monitored every 10-20 minutes. Placing such a person in solitary confinement in a cell with a large plastic bag is also highly irregular.

Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis stated that "looking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail." This conflicts with the fact that there was no report of marijuana being found on Bland when she was booked into Waller County jail. It's standard procedure for a prisoner to be extensively searched prior to being placed in a jail cell. The idea that a large quantity of marijuana would have been missed as part of this search, or that she could have smoked it during the 3 days she was incarcerated without jail personnel knowing, is implausible.

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A screen shot from the video showing the moment a female warden discovered Bland's body in her cell.
According to media, local officials released three hours of surveillance video from the hallway outside Bland's cell, although the entire video has not been made available to the public. Several versions of the same video have been edited by mainstream media outlets to explain what is happening, based on Waller County jail officials' chronology. One version of the video is clearly a recording of the video as it played on a monitor.

Waller County Sheriff's investigators said the video starts at time-stamp 6:03 a.m., but it is actually nine minutes, 26 seconds fast. At the start, jail officers can be seen serving breakfast, which Bland refused.

At about 6:51 a.m., an officer can be seen entering cell 95 for a security check.

At 7:17 a.m., a different male officer can be seen peering into the rectangular window of cell 95, according to the chronology, "checking on Ms. Bland."

About 30 seconds later, another officer stops at cell 95 and appears to be talking to Bland for a few seconds.

There's then a gap in the footage — from 7:18 to 7:24 a.m. From 7:34 to 9:07 a.m., the video shows no movement in or out of cell 95. Or, to put it another way, the video camera recorded nothing since it is motion-activated. At 9:07 a.m., a female officer looks into Bland's cell and runs to get help. Paramedics arrive 5 minutes later when Bland is pronounced dead. Capt. Brian Cantrell has stated that Bland was found in a "semi-standing position with the ligature surrounding her neck". Is it physically possible to hang yourself when your feet can touch the ground?

Based on the partial video evidence, Bland was probably murdered somewhere between 7:18 and 9:00am.

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According to her family members Bland was a confident and determined woman who was "ecstatic" about her new job in A&M University. Like everyone, she had her ups and downs, but the idea that she was contemplating "suicide" is unthinkable. Yet Waller County officials and the US media are using the fact that Bland had had a miscarriage over a year ago, along with alleged marijuana use, to support their conclusion that Bland took her own life. Citing preliminary autopsy results that show no sign of a violent struggle, Waller County prosecutor Warren Diepraam said that the cause of Sandra Bland's death was hanging; the manner of her death was suicide. Yet this conclusion fails to consider the relative ease with which a person can be incapacitated without a struggle and then 'suicided'. After about 48 hours, chloroform, for example, is no longer present in a human body.

Glenn Smith is Waller County Sheriff. In 2007, as the chief of police in Hempstead, he was accused of racism and police brutality during an arrest. Council members opted to suspend him for just two weeks. The following year, more allegations of police misconduct were leveled at Smith and his deputies, and he was fired. He promptly ran for county sheriff and won. He is now tasked with investigating Bland's death in the jail he oversees.

There appear to be two lines of force at work here; righteous anger by US citizens - particularly blacks - against overweening, intrusive and abusive police (state) authority and racism will not be tolerated, and may well get you murdered. But it will also be exploited on a broad scale by the same authorities to divide and control all Americans. The increase in racist attacks over the past year, from New York (Eric Garner) to Ferguson (Mike Brown) to Baltimore (Freddie Gray) and Charleston (Dylann Roof's shooting spree), suggest that a particularly American brand of 'color revolution' may be in the works in the USA. After all, what better 'fault line' in the human psyche to exploit than the age-old and depressingly human tendency to allow themselves to be divided based on the color of their skin?