who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. But a hugely disproportionate number, 3 in 5 of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic (10).”
The results of the study should be sobering, if not downright appalling. Both the investigation by the United States Justice Department and the study by The Washington Post found evidence to support claims of unlawful racial targeting by multiple police departments throughout the country. In addition to these reports, there are numerous additional on-going investigations of police officers, police departments, and other law enforcement agencies for similar practices.
Predatory police practices and the killings of unarmed African Americans have likely persisted for over a century with an inkling of impunity. The difference maker today is due to essentially two key reasons, the advent of the body camera and civilian video tapings with their camera phones. People are now able to capture footage of these violent altercations and bring them to the public view, which is precisely what occurred in the Rodney King police brutality case. On March 3, 1991, while Mr. King, an African American taxi driver, was being violently beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers, a civilian, George Holliday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to the local news station. This event sparked a historic wildfire series of riots and civil unrest.
One of the leading explanations for unarmed killings of African Americans as proposed by critics and analysts, both within and outside of law enforcement, is the lack of training of police officers on how to de-escalate situations at potential crime scenes and during arrests. This argument points to an alleged inability of officers to accurately assess and effectively respond to an African American suspect’s mental and emotional state. One could say that the white officers’ unfamiliarity with the communication styles, customs, and protocols used in the black community, combined with the innate fear and suspicion of African American stereo ←10 | 11→types is the deep-rooted behavior arising from nearly four hundred years of brutality and oppression stemming from colonial slavery. Regardless of the reason, America and the rest of the world are finding it harder to ignore the significant rise in the number of police killings of unarmed black men.
For example, during the writing of this book, unarmed African American male, Walter Scott, a United States Coast Guard veteran, husband, and father was gunned down and killed in the state of South Carolina by former police officer Michael Slager, in April of 2015. After the incident, the North Charleston Police Department immediately fired officer Slager, who was subsequently charged with murder. The case went to trial and unfortunately, resulted in a mistrial, which understandably outraged the civil rights communities. This case is just one of many cases of white law enforcement officers being exonerated of criminal charges in the deaths of unarmed men and women of color. Like countless similar preceding cases, the black community is again left with no answers. How can an unarmed man, fleeing from the police, warrant six lethal shots to the back? Furthermore, how can such an action, resulting in Mr. Scott’s death, be justified? Mr. Scott, being unarmed, posed no threat to the police officer’s safety and well-being, nor to the community at large, and yet, he was killed without any severe consequences to the shooter.
Just three months later, on July 10, 2015, the bizarre case of Sandra Bland drew national and international attention. Bland, a 28-year-old African American Chicago woman was living in the state of Texas at the time. On a July afternoon, she was pulled over for a minor traffic violation; a failure to signal during a lane change. The conversation between Sandra and a Texas State trooper, Brian Encinia, turned volatile quickly. Coincidently, as the situation escalated, while Officer Encinia was commanding Sandra to exit her vehicle, the police trooper’s dashboard camera ceased to work properly. An eyewitness, who overheard Sandra screaming and crying, began recording the incident, but was immediately ordered to leave the scene. Shortly after being pulled over for what many argue did not even warrant a traffic stop, Sandra Bland was arrested and jailed at the Waller County Jail.
Within three days of her incarceration, Bland was found dead in her cell. The autopsy report cited the cause of her death as suicide by hanging. This was a complete shock to Sandra’s immediate family members who were fully convinced that she was en-route to her first day on a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. Understandably, several private and federal investigations were launched, culminating into a $1.9 million dollar wrongful death civil settlement to Sandra’s family.
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Though the Bland vs. Waller County jail case resulted in a large civil settlement and multiple private and federal investigations, it did not lead to any criminal conviction for Encinia or anyone connected to the Waller County Jail. Officer Encinia was indicted by a grand jury for perjury for making false statements in his incident report, which included the claim that he removed Sandra Bland from her car in order to conduct a “safer traffic investigation.” But the perjury charge was later dismissed because a grand jury refused to indict anyone in the death of Sandra Bland.
Another national uproar followed the event. Civil rights organizations thrusted themselves intensively into the case, advocating for justice for the victim’s family. Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, was one of nine grieving mothers who spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention regarding unlawful traffic stops and arrests and mentioned the fact that six other women died in custody the same month that her daughter was found dead in her jail cell. According to a study by the University of Texas at Austin Research Institute, “nearly 7,000 people died in Texas jails and prisons, or while in police custody over the past decade,” and over 1,100 of the deaths occurred while suspects were in custody in jails like the Waller County Jail. African Americans, who make up only 12% of the state’s population, account for 30% of custodial deaths. In addition, the New York Daily News reported that “nearly 90% of the people who died in such encounters had not been charged with any crimes (8).”
An article published on July 29, 2015, The Guardian.com, stated that according to Brandon Wood, Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said that “140 inmates in Texas county jails have killed themselves since 2009, mostly white men. Suicide, usually by hanging, represents about one-third of the total deaths. Bland’s gender and race mark her out as unique (4).” What makes the county’s findings in the Bland case so dubious is the fact that white men account for most of these suicides, at about three times the rate as black and Hispanics people. According to Wood, “Bland’s gender and race mark her an unlikely prospect for suicide and if the allegations were true, she is the first African American woman to kill herself in a Texas county jail since the state’s standards agency started keeping death records (4).”
Nevertheless, the case sheds greater light on the issue of racial profiling and police brutality. The Marshall Project, which reported the Texas Commission’s findings, states that “after Bland’s death, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspected the Waller County Jail (3).” That inspection revealed several violations of protocols established to guarantee inmate safety and to insure staff ←12 | 13→competence. In fact, according to a report from ABC13.com, “as a condition of the settlement, Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, says the Waller County jail must provide emergency nurses for all shifts; use automated electronic sensors to ensure accurate and timely cell checks; and activity seek the passage of additional state funds for jail intaking, inmate screening, training and additional jail support (1).”
Unfortunately, it took the death of an unarmed, college-educated, African American woman on her way to a new job to bring about these necessary changes. Some would argue that Sandra Bland was obligated to comply with the
