WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland was pulled over by a Texas state troopers for failing to signal while changing lanes. The trooper arrested the 28-year-old activist after she allegedly she engaged in an altercation with him.
“[T]he traffic stop… begins with a racial profiling incident in its inception. Because this woman is an activist, is knowledgeable, and is protesting the officer’s conduct, it was going to escalate because she felt at that moment, like I feel, she had been stopped for no reason.”
A video of the arrest by a passerby showed Bland being forced to lay on the ground on her stomack with her hands tied behind her back. Bland was detained after the arrest, but was found hanged in her jail cell three days later.
Kamau said while Bland’s arrest is an example of “classic racial profiling,” the Texas police released a video of her arrest to make the police look good in the situation.
“I don’t believe their explanation, and no one else should.”
Earlier on Wednesday, media reported of possible irregularities in the continuity of Bland’s arrest video.
Texas Department of Public Safety Press Secretary Tom Vinger told Sputnik on Wednesday that Bland’s arrest video was not edited before it was released to the public. The upload of the video affected the video’s quality and the Department of Public Safety reposted the video after having properly restored it.
Kamau, a decorated former Hawthorne, California, police detective sergeant, argued US citizens cannot have confidence in the police over acts such as pulling citizens like Bland over.
He said being pulled over for switching lanes without signaling is one of the most common traffic offenses in the United States. Bland’s being pulled over is suspicious right from the get-go.
The event began as a “suspicious stop,” he noted, and if Texas police are racially profiling, that was obviously the officer’s motive.
PoliceAbuse.com is a US non-profit organization providing assistance to victims of police misconduct in the United States.
