The State Trooper who arrested Sandra Bland has been indicted for perjury. Link here, and I am trying to figure out what precisely they allege he lied about.
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JPL
According to the NYTimes Special prosecutors said that the charge stemmed from a statement that the trooper made about his actions during the arrest. A special prosecutor, Phoebe Smith, said that the “grand jury didn’t believe that statement was truthful.”
My uneducated guess, is they wanted to charge him with something because he’s a dirty cop and it’s the best they could do.
geg6
Well, that’s something, at least.
I can’t figure out what he lied about either, Cole. Either the reporter doesn’t know or he/she isn’t telling.
Mnemosyne
I followed a link in that story to a story about her death being ruled a suicide and I have to say, if the allegations are true, that country is going to badly lose the Bland family’s lawsuit, because they clearly failed to take appropriate steps to monitor her AND they had a previous suicide in custody in 2012 due to similar neglect but clearly didn’t address the underlying problems.
The evidence for suicide is looking pretty strong given her statements to jail personnel when she was booked, so now it becomes a question of why they ignored her statements and neglected to do even the hourly check required by the county.
Patricia Kayden
Good to hear although I wish he was indicted for something more substantial. He doesn’t deserve to be working as a cop.
Xboxershorts
From the Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Grand-jury-to-meet-today-to-hear-more-details-6740043.php
“The charge stemmed from a statement Encinia made in his report of the arrest, in which said he pulled Bland out of her car to continue the investigation.”
He did not Pull her from the car to continue the investigation. He pulled her from the car because she wouldn’t put out here cigarette…he probably thought she was bein “uppity” too but that’s for another thread…
Xboxershorts
Why do my comments go to moderation?
Did I piss someone off? I thought that was expected behavior here?
eemom
Uh, the article says right here:
What it doesn’t say is whether the GJ is finished; i.e., if this is going to be the ONLY charge against that asshole.
Holden Pattern
@Mnemosyne: Just as an FYI, if you look at the documents where Sandra Bland allegedly made those statements, you’ll see that they are not in Bland’s handwriting, not signed by Bland, and they state clearly that the LEO clerk is completing the form.
By contrast in the forms where it does look like Sandra Bland filled out the forms herself, or at least the documents that she signed, it doesn’t say anything about previous suicide attempts.
So it’s entirely possible that Sandra Bland did make those statements, but there doesn’t seem to be any direct evidence — it’s basically that jail staff SAID she made those statements.
http://documents.latimes.com/booking-documents-sandra-bland/
Tommy
@eemom: The cop dragged her out of her car. Look I am all for “do what a police officer says” but if in her situation I’d fight back if not actually push back.
JPL
@eemom: The NYTimes.. changed it’s article.. This is the original
Ms. Bland, 28, who was black, was returning to Texas to take a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. She was pulled her over by Trooper Encinia in a routine traffic stop in Prairie View, northwest of Houston, for failing to use her turn signal………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
A police dashboard-camera video shows an escalating confrontation after Ms. Bland refuses Trooper Encinia’s request to put out a cigarette. At one point, Trooper Encinia says he will forcibly remove her from her car and threatens Ms. Bland with a Taser, saying, “I will light you up.”
Here’s the one your read
The charge stemmed from a one-page affidavit that Trooper Encinia filed with jail officials justifying the arrest of Ms. Bland, who was pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Prairie View, northwest of Houston, for failing to use her turn signal. Ms. Bland, 28, who was black, was returning to Texas in July to take a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The trooper wrote that he removed Ms. Bland from her car in order to conduct a safe traffic investigation, but “the grand jury found that statement to be false,” a special prosecutor, Shawn McDonald, said.
Thank you for the update.. I thought I had missed something and since I had the original article up… I could reread it.
debbie
@geg6:
He had to have exaggerated. Is failure to use your signal when pulling over to get out of the way of a cop car with a siren going really an arrestable offense?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@debbie: That wasn’t what she was arrested for. She was arrested for refusing to cooperate. Now, the initial decision to pull her over was bullshit, and the decision to keep escalating when she objected to the bullshit was also bullshit, but it wasn’t illegal bullshit. That says something ugly about the leeway we allow cops, but I’ll be very surprised if the arrest itself generates an indictment.
Gimlet
Background on the bogus traffic stop
http://heavy.com/news/2015/07/brian-encinia-texas-state-trooper-waller-county-officer-cop-arrested-sandra-sandy-bland-traffic-stop-video-arrest-investigation-desk-duty-fired-charges-wrongdoing-photo-age-experience/
The nearly hourlong video starts with the end of an unrelated traffic stop. Then, Encinia makes a U-turn and ends up behind Bland. Her car can be seen in the left-hand lane of two lanes as Encinia’s patrol car approaches her. Bland then moves from the left lane into the right lane, and Encinia pulls her over.
Encinia approaches the vehicle and says to Bland, “Hello mam,” to which she replies “hi.” He says, “the reason for your stop is you failed to signal a lane change, got your driver’s license and insurance with you?” and then asks her, “what’s wrong?”
After a few seconds of silence, he asks her, “how long have you been in Texas?” and she replies she got there yesterday. He then returns to his car after asking her to “give him a few minutes.”
Encinia then exits his his vehicle and approaches the driver’s side door of Bland’s car. He asks her “you OK?” and she replies “I’m waiting on you, this is your job.” Encinia then says, “you seem very irritated,” and Bland replies, “I am, I really I am. I don’t know what I’m getting a ticket for, you were speeding up, tailing me, I move over and you stop me. So, yeah I am a little irritated, but that doesn’t stop you from giving me a ticket, so give me a ticket.”
eemom
@JPL:
Cool….I guess this means the NYT read Cole’s post!
debbie
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
And because of that, the arrest was not justified. It was an abuse of power and he has to be held accountable.
eemom
IIRC the asshole actually made a U turn to follow her. Why did he do that, other than that she was a black woman? Then, her failure to signal was because he was tailing her and she was trying to get out of his way.
I also recall reading that the dash cam recorded his stop immediately before Bland of a young white college student who turned out not to have her insurance card. Said she had to ask her dad for it, and he let her go with a laugh.
Fucking racist scumbag. Whether he goes to jail or not, I hope her death haunts him the rest of his life.
danielx
Dear me, a law enforcement officer perjuring him or herself? I am shocked, shocked…that he got caught out. They practically teach it at police academies these days; I understand the term is “testilying”.
JPL
@eemom: It won’t haunt him. He’ll get fired, start a fundraiser and laugh all the way to the bank. Scum is just scum sometimes.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Isn’t this an awfully thin reed on which to base a perjury case? How do you prove what his motivations were at the time of the traffic stop, and what, exactly, is this material to?
geg6
@eemom:
You and I both know it won’t. He laughs about it with his buddies, for sure.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@debbie:
It wasn’t justified in the colloquial sense of what the term means, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that it wasn’t justified in legal terms. As far as I can tell, he didn’t break any laws during the arrest. If I were the police department, I’d fire him from the force as soon as the investigation is over, but it wasn’t a criminal offense. You may not like that police officers are given that much discretion; I don’t either. But they are.
Cacti
@danielx:
It’s part of the same course where they teach you to say “stop resisting” as you brutalize a totally compliant suspect.
Roger Moore
@eemom:
IIRC, the cop said he was going to let Bland off with a warning, too. It wasn’t her acting aggrieved about having been pulled over that got her in trouble; it was refusing to put out her cigarette. That was what she died for: a perfectly legal refusal to extinguish her cigarette on demand.
trollhattan
Speaking of folks needing a good firing, the hammer finally drops on this guy.
Florida Man. Am sure his new career pulling the wings off butterflies will be just as rewarding.
Immanentize
My hope is that this is a shake-the-tree charge where the first fellow indicted makes a deal. Please?
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the school asked him to get a mental health evaluation, but that kind of thing is usually kept confidential. Writing letters to people demanding that they prove their murdered son existed should be enough to get an evaluation of someone’s mental competence, one would think.
raven
She went to my high school.
eemom
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I don’t think it’s thin at all. Perjury is lying under oath. An affidavit is testimony under oath. Based on the video I think the GJ was perfectly correct to conclude that his statement in the affidavit that “the reason he removed Ms. Bland from her car was to further conduct a safe traffic investigation” was, as we lawyers say, bullshitus obviousus .
The statement in question also had nothing to do with his motivations for pulling her over.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I wonder if this indictment would have happened if the death hadn’t gotten national attention.
eemom
…..and as far as it being “material”, the perjured statement goes to the very essence of the investigation. As Roger Moore pointed out above, the video demonstrates that the real reason he told her to get out of the car was because she wouldn’t obey his UNLAWFUL order to put out her cigarette….IOW, because she wouldn’t kiss his big old cop-badge ass that he no doubt got to compensate for his itty bitty little dick. That order to get out of the car was the immediate cause of the events that led to her death.
J R in WV
@debbie:
Come on now! You know that driving while black is not only arrestable, it’s a death penalty administered right there by the side of the road!
Where have you been that past couple of years?
Holding a BB gun in Walmart where you are buying the BB gun While Black? DEAD!
Failure to signal a turn? DEAD
Holding a bunch of loose cigarettes while black? DEAD
Riding a bike in public while black? DEAD (this one is still pending…)
But you get my drift…
debbie
@J R in WV:
You left out the guy who was stopped in Detroit after someone reported him as suspicious because he was walking with his hands in his pockets.
nutella
@J R in WV:
As I understand it, Freddie Gray was chased down and arrested because a group of bike cops thought he looked at them funny.
Anne Laurie
@Xboxershorts:
In the latest FYWP upgrade, “naked” links — where you just paste in the url — go straight to moderation.
If you can see the row of tabs/buttons above the comment block, you can dress up your links by highlighting an explanatory phrase (like “the Daily News reports”), clicking the ‘link’ button, pasting the url into the pop-up box, and hitting ‘post’.
Of course, you still can’t use more than three links in one post before going to moderation — and using the reply button to address a particular commentor still counts as a link!
Barry
@debbie: “He had to have exaggerated. Is failure to use your signal when pulling over to get out of the way of a cop car with a siren going really an arrestable offense?”
Welcome to the US of A.
And the forged jail papers are IIMHO reason to get a gallows ready.
Barry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “…but I’ll be very surprised if the arrest itself generates an indictment.”
That doesn’t mean much. See Chicago for many, many examples.
Barry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “That wasn’t what she was arrested for. She was arrested for refusing to cooperate. ”
Not true. He had handed her the ticket and everything would have been over, but he wanted to f*ck her over.
Barry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “Isn’t this an awfully thin reed on which to base a perjury case? How do you prove what his motivations were at the time of the traffic stop, and what, exactly, is this material to?
”
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Barry
@Immanentize: “My hope is that this is a shake-the-tree charge where the first fellow indicted makes a deal. Please?”
With that and the forged jail paperwork…………..we can hope.
KS in MA
@Barry:
Amen and amen.
Xboxershorts
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks for the explanation.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Unless her statements are on tape, I wouldn’t necessarily believe them.