TexasCHLforum.com

Jaguar wrote:Upon failure to cooperate with this request the officer decides to arrest her. "Well you can step on out now."

Okay, why was she arrested? She was having a bad day and didn't make any pretense on hiding that fact. He seemed reasonable up until the point he "asked" her to put her cigarette out. After she refused his request (he did say please) she was immediately being arrested. The arrest was for assaulting a police officer, but that didn't happen until after she was in cuffs and yanked around a few times. She used foul language once it became clear she was going to jail, but only seemed upset that she was pulled over and was fairly polite up until the "step out" part. She did have an "attitude" but no worse than what I hear daily and I don't give out traffic tickets.

Well, that isn't how I saw it. Maybe our perceptions of the world is different, which is entirely reasonable.

When she asked why did she have to put out her cigarette because she was in her own car, he asked her to step out of the car. At that moment, I do not assume it was step out of the car to arrest her, it was just giving her a lawful order to step out of the car. Clearly, she was going downhill on failing the attitude test thereafter. When she was refusing a lawful order and he said he was going to remove her, I believe the assaulting the police officer happened while she was still in the car, and resisting being removed from the car.

My attitude regarding police stops is that every one is a negotiation. Someone is either going to get a ticket or go to jail today, but it doesn't have to be me. My actions have a big influence on what path the negotiations take. She obviously chose a different route.

cb1000rider wrote:I can't tell if that's a joke or not about Obama.
If you're saying that she shouldn't have "assaulted" a police officer and she'd still be alive, then I take issue with that. No one deserves to die for that offense.

I don't think you are seeing the distinction I am making.

Let me make an analogy. One conversation I often have with my children is avoiding "The Iron Triangle of Trouble": Don't do stupid things with stupid people in stupid places. Sometimes the phrase is expressed as bad things with bad people in bad places. It is simply being prudent, and improving the probability of going through life without unpleasant consequences.

If I am walking around in the worst parts of Houston at 2:00 am and find myself being badly beaten and robbed, clearly I do not "deserve" to be beaten and robbed. However, if I had avoided walking those streets at that time of night and had chosen to be home in bed in my middle class suburb, it is also indisputable that particular predator who decided to beat and rob me would not have done so.

If my 19 year old daughter is dressed provocatively, goes out and gets drunk out of her mind, and gets raped, she does not "deserve" to get raped. However, she could have made different choices that did not make her as vulnerable to that risk.

In Sandra Bland's circumstance, her online postings made it clear she was a self-described activist who was angry, strident, vocal, and militant. She apparently had an altercation at roadside with a police officer that included assaulting the police officer and resulted in her being arrested and taken to jail. If (and that is a big IF because the evidence is totally unknown at this point) she was killed by the police while in custody, she clearly did not "deserve" to be killed. However, it is also indisputable that different behavior on her part during the traffic stop would likely have resulted in a simple traffic ticket and never being taken to jail and thus she would never have placed herself in jeopardy.

And that is where I get back to Obama. His race-baiting antics have inflamed the situation and made things worse, and certainly has not been the "post racial President" that he campaigned as in 2008. We have a lot of people driving around who are angry and militant like this young woman and the President has made the situation worse, not better. So no, I am not joking when I say I also blame Obama.

It is also Obama's fault.

He has so politicized numerous incidents over the years turning everything into a black victimization mindset that now this young gal is a self-described "civil rights activist", angry, and arrested for assaulting a police officer. Like everyone else, I do not know the circumstances of her death, but I do know that different behavior on her part may very well have resulted in a simple traffic ticket and not getting hauled off to jail. And she'd still be alive.

Bland, who graduated from Prairie View A&M but recently lived in Chicago, filled her Facebook page with videos in which she made observations about race in America under the title "Sandy Speaks."

"Being a black person in America is very, very hard," she said in a recent post. "Show me in American history where all lives matter."