First, a timeline: On July 13th, Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell. The 28-year-old African-American woman had been arrested in Hempstead, the county seat of Waller County, Texas, on the charge of assaulting a police officer after he asked her to put out her cigarette. Recently released footage from the officer's dash-cam appears to show the trooper in question threatening Bland for simply being unresponsive. Three days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell. The Waller County prosecutor claims her autopsy shows her injuries were "consistent" with a suicide, the New York Times reports.
The strange saga of Sandra Bland has become yet another flashpoint in the steady count of African Americans who have died at the hands of police, either during a run-in with an officer (Eric Garner, Walter Scott) or in police custody (Freddie Gray). Bland's case is even more disturbing when you consider that she is one of five black women to have died in jail in July; most recently, 43-year-old New York woman Raynetta Turner was found dead in her cell, after waiting two days for her arraignment on a shoplifting charge.
[For more of this story, written by Jared Keller, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...ot-just-sandra-bland]
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