"I will light you up!"

What happened was the officer first asked her to put out her cigarette. She did not have to comply with that order. He had no right to demand that.

Then because he didn't like her attitude, he told her to get out of the car. He does have the right to enforce that.

She was being difficult, but I think officers should lean more on trying to remain polite themselves than demanding obediance and respect from everyone they come across.

She was in jail and died because she pissed off a cop.

Not a smart move on her part, but the more crap like this happens, the more people fear police officers, and not in a good way.

 

So you think the cop arranged for her to hang herself, huh? Or you think the cop killed her and made it look like a suicide?

 

Someday I hope law enforcement gets the message that to get respect you have to show respect for others. Someone who appears to be a safety risk bets belligerent? Okay. Not a freakin' (questionable at best) turn signal in the middle of the day.

Escalation or not, what is most upsetting is this is such a minor infraction, in the best case scenario for the police, and it leads to an arrest.

Distilled down, someone is dead because they were jailed for failing to make a turn signal; in what place is anyone okay with that scenario? Should be zero.

 

I'm really not trying to be difficult here, as I agree completely that the arresting officer stepped in the shit in the worst kind of way. But I cannot for the life of me understand why it is so obvious to so many people that this young woman, had she not been arrested/jailed, would be alive today. Because that is not at all obvious to me.

 

She thought she was starting a new job in Texas. Instead, she was stuck in jail, for days, because she didn't use a turn signal to change lanes. To give a cop room to get past her.

I don't know. It seems like that kind of little annoyance might just be enough to upset a young woman.

 

The cop shares responsibility in how things escalated and it was entirely his decision to arrest her.

I don't know what happened after that, but my understanding is that being in jail is not a net positive.

 

It was absolutely poor policing, and the fault is the officer's.

Period.

The woman should have never set foot in that jail, and the officer should never wear the badge again.

 

Bah, I can't play along anymore because in this kind of a venue it'll sound as if I'm saying she somehow deserved it, and that's not where I am at all. Of course it was bad policing on the officer's part. And of course she shouldn't have been jailed, though if you ask me she sure acted as if she wanted to be. I may be a middle-aged white guy dripping with privilege (yeah, right) but I can't imagine a realistic circumstance in which I'd dare a police officer to pull me out of the car.* I doubt you, or anyone else 'round here, would do that either.

But she's not dead because she was jailed.


*"Let's do this."

 

Always fun in these circumstances to imagine the parallel universe in which we have a police report but no video.

I wonder how violent she would have been in that. Ninja-like, I bet.

 

And being in jail for days for a minor traffic offense at that. If she was depressed or in some other way on the edge anyway that certainly can send her over the top. It's not to say something during that time frame wouldn't have done the same thing if she hadn't been arrested, but I think it's pretty damn awful she is in jail for three days for pretty much nothing. How does that happen?

 

If everyone who failed to use their turn signal was arrested, there would be more people living in jail than at home. Two-thirds of U.S. drivers have no clue what that lever on the steering column is for.