You know the family has asked for no social media posts and no political action having to do with this case? Not saying anyone should necessarily abide by that (an interesting question).
Is this social media? I thought it was an eclectic web magazine.
But yeah, horrific and mind-boggling. Pulled over for failure to signal lane change properly and dead a couple of days later. Can you even imagine?
1 is unexpected, given that Sandra herself was pretty politically active on social media.
Pulled over for failure to signal lane change properly and dead a couple of days later. Can you even imagine?
After the last couple of years I sort of thought, yeah of course.
Even without the absurd arrest and whatever horribleness happened in the jail, pulling someone for failing to signal a lane change is some bullshit.
There is a long history of fuckedupedness involving Waller County authorities and Prairie View. Much of it centering around voting and the "threat" of students voting in what was nearly a minority-majority county. Population has more than doubled since I lived down there as it increasingly becomes part of exurban Houston leading to a higher % of whites. But still a hotbed of voter suppression in recent times--a living illustration of the value of preclearance (although iirc the county tried to ignore it on several occasions).
I disagree with 5. Signal all turns and lane changes, people! Obviously what happened after she was pulled over was horrible, but pulling someone over for failure to obey traffic laws is exactly what I want to see from cops. It's not like signaling correctly is some kind of burden.
I dislike fines as a means of enforcement and a whole lot of other things about the way traffic laws violations are handled, but simply pulling someone over isn't a bad thing. In an ideal world you get a warning, a little lecture, and you are on your way hopefully a more considerate and careful driver.
It's not like signaling correctly is some kind of burden.
Wow, check your privilege, Whitey. How can you know the experience of the Oppressed and Othered?
I'm on both sides of that (shocker!). I'd like to live in a world where the speed limit was the speed limit, and regulations about signaling were regulations, and both of those were enforced as a matter of course -- where people got tickets for driving 58 in a 55 zone. (58 is too slow? Then change the speed limit, rather than making speeding tickets a judgment call).
But that is not the traffic world we live in -- a ticket for failure to signal is really very very uncommon, at which point I think any individual cop issuing one is very likely some bullshit. I want a change in the system, not individual police officers deciding to be martinets.
The law in its majesty compels black and white alike to signal lane changes in Waller County, Texas.
I agree with LB's principled attempt to agree with everybody.
My compromise is that I occasionally punch a car.
I think we've talked about this, but doesn't that hurt? Slapping makes a nice loud noise and is easier on the knuckles.
I forget who the main proponent of that idea is- that all laws should be strictly enforced, and written to align with actual behavior/compliance/safety needs, because giving cops any discretion is inviting discriminatory enforcement.
But if you do that then you end up with people getting the death penalty just because Wesley is a bad football receiver.
(Last time I dropped a random TV reference it led to 20-odd comments taking the question seriously.)
That's what I'm actually doing, of course. "Punching" just sounds tougher.
1,3: I don't know if the family elaborated on their reasons for the request, but I could see asking the same, because I would be out of my mind with grief.
And I could maybe get behind togolosh's zero-tolerance policy for signaling, since it would clear half the drivers here off the roads.
13, 14 I've found umbrella's serve nicely for this task.Run me over in the cross walk? How you'd like a nice dent in your Audi. I used to have a really great collapsible one that felt like a club but then I lost it. I didn't find $5.
15: But he smashed the little greenhouse!
19 more extraneous apostrophes. Ugh.
19: You want a steel combat umbrella.
14. It's a motion like a backhand, you strike the center of the big panel with the pad between your wrist and pinky. Maybe visualize Bruce Lee or Zhang Ziyi.
20-odd comments taking the question seriously
I was just bored and avoiding work.
I try not to visualize Zhang Ziyi when I'm crossing the street. I'd probably get run over.
I've found that a good solid kick into the front bumper makes a very impressive sounding crunching noise but produces no (visible) damage.
Yes we can! make this a cycling thread.
I don't even own a bicycle (that I've ridden).
Once a few months ago I banged my briefcase into the side of a truck that had just gunned it into a left turn through a red light into the crosswalk where I had a walk light.* The guy pulled over, ran around the corner, and accosted me on the sidewalk in the next block, yelling at me about how I didn't want to hit his car. It kind of seemed like he wanted to fight.
In retrospect I wish I'd told him I didn't think he should be speeding through red lights into crosswalks, especially when there are women pushing strollers across them (not me, obvs, she was going the other way), and my harmless whack on the fender was my way of letting him know that. In the moment all I did was to keep my headphones in, say "okay," and turn around and go on my way.
*The car that was two spots ahead of him in line was in the intersection waiting to turn and within its rights to proceed after the light changed. The next one was borderline. This guy was not close.
Also, there's an obvious flaw in kicking the front bumper of somebody who you know is a shitty driver.
26: Back in the day when airbags were new you could apparently set them off in some models with a solid blow to the right place on the bumper. Considering how violent an airbag deployment actually is it's probably not a good thing to do, and impossible now that manufacturers have got better calibrated sensors.
29: He got out of his car? That's never happened to me yet.
29. You want to be careful with that kind of shit.
If you go around being afraid to confront anybody because you might get stabbed, things are going to get worse. Anyway, it's mostly being shot or run over you need to worry about here.
34: Yeah, it was a first for me too. My heartrate was definitely up, and getting out of there without provoking further crazy behavior was the only thought in my head (precluding any clever lines about his bad driving). He was definitely agitated and in my face, though he stopped short of actually touching me. Yet one more time I've been glad to be 6'3 and 200 lbs -- it's hard to say how it might've gone differently if he'd found me to be smaller than him.
I mean, not to say that my intimidating physique stopped a would-be stabber, but I could imagine him getting out of his car planning to take a swing.
"Everything we know about Sandra Bland" turns out to be surprisingly little. Arrested for some bullshit then... dead. Even given everything we know about law enforcement and systemic racism, staging a hanging in jail is some extreme shit.
37 - I flipped a guy off once for a near accident (which was almost certainly my fault! I should not have done it!), and he turned his car around to box me in, got out of the car, walked over and didn't leave until I rolled down the window so he could call me a shit and a menace. This was in the early 2000s, before I had a cell phone, and I was genuinely somewhat worried he was either going to smash up my car or shoot me.
I've had two different car owners nearly hit me and then get out in a screaming rage when I yelled at them for it. It sounds scary but honestly they're a lot less threatening when they aren't inside the cars, for obvious reasons. And no amount of "DO YOU WANT TO FIGHT!? DO YOU??"* is going to impress me much when I'm in the middle of the adrenaline rush that comes from nearly being run over.
*"NO BECAUSE I'M NOT A FUCKING CHILD GO AWAY!" They never seem to know how to react when you respond like that.
You think they bought Sandra Bland some Burger King on the way to the morgue?
So what exactly is going on with the dashcam video? The audio is continuous but there are repeats of video which means some video parts have been excised and crudely covered over, and now the department pulled the video from YouTube?