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    Sid and FinancyGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:08am

    To be fair, failing to signal a lane change is kind of a dick move.

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      RickeyHendersonForeverSid and Financy
      7/22/16 10:10am

      what!?!?

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      Sobchak SecuritySid and Financy
      7/22/16 10:11am

      I’ll bet she was taking the Pot at the time too. And she wasn’t 5' 4" and 115 lbs like it said on her driver’s license… She was twelve feet tall, weighed half a ton and had recently had surgery to replace her hands with industrial size vice grips.

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    CanmonGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:16am

    I’m not sure why it’s described as “bizarre” and “improbable”. Inmates try to commit suicide all the time. The officers screwed up by not watching her closely enough, but she had given them nothing to indicate that she should be on suicide watch. The officer has been punished, as they should be, but she’s the one responsible for committing suicide.

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      ChrisMSFCanmon
      7/22/16 10:26am

      Your argument relies on the foundational premise that she did, in fact, kill herself. That’s not a known fact.

      And when someone with no history of suicidal feelings, who had just worked hard to start a new life in a new town and therefore clearly planned to be alive for a while, with no history of violence, and I don’t believe a criminal record, well when someone like that is accused of attacking the cops and then killing herself, with only the cops’ testimony which is known to be falsified to support them, well, maybe you can see how things might not be as tidy as you’ve presented them.

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      surferboy666ChrisMSF
      7/22/16 10:29am

      Is it only ever a “known fact” if it’s on video? If so, most suicides are still unsolved mysteries.

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    Low Information BoaterGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:14am

    I just don't get how this is possible. Our justice system is largely based on the premise that law enforcement officers are incapable of lying, like Vulcans. My worldview is shaken to the core.

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      angriest-squirrelLow Information Boater
      7/22/16 10:21am

      Our justice system is largely based on the premise that law enforcement officers are incapable of lying

      Our american brains seemed to be based on the premise that people are incapable of lying (w/ the exception of Lucifer in the Flesh, Hillary Clinton, of course).

      Case in point: the media response to the GOP convention—

      “Did you hear how Donald Trump said he cares about LGBTQ rights?! How he didn’t want LGBTQ people to be killed by terrorists? Revolutionary!! And did you see how Ivanka talked about gender equality?! And did you see how the GOP cheered when Trump talked about how he cares about African Americans? Forget their regressive social policies and their uber conservative platform and transvaginal ultrasounds and the birther movement and how they insinuate the Prez hates the police and is also in cahoots w/ terrorists and “legitimate rape” and the fact that everyone in the audience is white and one of their elected officials just said that only white people have done anything for civilization. THE GOP IS BECOMING THE PARTY OF EQUAL RIGHTS!”

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      Vanguard KnightLow Information Boater
      7/22/16 10:27am

      No our Law Enforcment system is and always has been focused on making wealthy white people feel safe at the expense of all others.

      From its orgin in slave patrols to the modern day, this is how it has always worked.

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    FreeRonGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:11am

    Though a source tells the Chronicle that special prosecutors were aware of the falsified records when the grand jury was convened, an attorney for Waller County tells the paper the guard’s admission was “a small portion of that testimony,” and taken out of context.

    What other possible context could there be? And who cares what % of the testimony that admission is? That’s kinda sorta a big fucking deal, no?

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      BouldersInMyNoseFreeRon
      7/22/16 10:19am

      Thats a house of cards. Once one statement is false, the rest have to be questioned.

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      jrfunkensteinFreeRon
      7/22/16 10:28am

      It’s not a big deal as long as the victim remains Black and dead.

      Now if she had been a little White kid eaten by a fucking Disney alligator, it would’ve been 24 hour a day international news coverage.

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    RobertMadooGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:11am

    You mean they’re covering it up? But I thought All Lives Mattered?!?

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      Quasar FunkRobertMadoo
      7/22/16 10:13am

      She’s dead now, so she doesn’t matter.

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      Vanguard KnightQuasar Funk
      7/22/16 10:24am

      You say that like her life mattered to REAL™ (White) America before she died.

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    bassguitarheroGabrielle Bluestone
    7/22/16 10:44am

    The Grand Jury prosecutor should be fired and disbarred for not actually trying to make a fucking case. How sad. I’m so sorry, Sandra Bland, these people killed you for no fucking reason and no one can even be arsed to try and prosecute someone for it.

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      Steven Q. StanleyGabrielle Bluestone
      7/22/16 10:17am

      I don’t trust cops, so not saying it isn’t fishy.... however the comment inferring someone who had never suicidal tendencies, whatever those are, could not be depressed or commit suicide is incredibly insensitive to people who struggle with depression, as well as those who have lost loved ones to suicide. Just because someone appears “fine” on the outside does not mean we should be dismissive of the mental pain and anguish a person may be going through. While I know the author meant no ill will, it’s still very disturbing wording.

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        thanksiworkoutSteven Q. Stanley
        7/22/16 10:36am

        I understand your concern, but I think the argument they are trying to make is that it is less likely that she committed suicide than if she had attempted suicide before or did express suicidal tendencies.

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      Chet ManleyGabrielle Bluestone
      7/22/16 10:20am

      I doubt that Sandra Bland was lynched in the literal sense of the word. However, I would propose that her death comes from something more sinister and insidious.

      The American criminal justice system and its police have created a world in which a police officer has almost limitless capacity to arrest you and charge you with a felony. Where every interaction carries the real risk of prison, even if the interaction was initiated with no real suspicion of criminal activity. It is a system where African Americans live in fear of armed agents of the state depriving them of liberty on the thinnest pretext.

      Imagine being pulled over, treated with perfunctory respect in the form of half sneering “Ma’ams and sirs.” Imagine fearing that no matter what you do, your life will be ruined because at best you take a plea deal because that’s the best your lawyer can do - particularly if it’s a public defender - and realizing that you will probably lose your job and then have to explain a criminal record to every future employer.

      Then imagine going through a dehumanizing booking process and being thrown into jail. At best nobody offers you any explanation, at worst they reinforce the idea that you will go to prison, that you are guilty.

      The result is suicidal ideation for the incarcerated. She became a nothing. A person whose life, whose aspirations, whose dignity meant nothing. She was sneered at and taunted with threats of prison. Imagine that scenario, and she might attempt suicide because in that moment it was the only reasonable answer to each of these dehumanizing moments. Now imagine a jail officer who doesn’t care enough to check on the people in his care - because when you are in jail, you are in the care of the state - so her ideation becomes an attempt, which becomes an actual suicide.

      Was she lynched in the literal sense of white hands hanging her? Probably not. But the system lynched her by taking away her humanity, abandoning her, and leaving her in a state where she did the hanging for them. So how do you stop that kind of lynching, when it implicates the entire system that we have constructed rather, when you don’t have the convenience of blaming a few bad apples like the KKK, when you have to implicate yourself and everything that you have constructed to support your way of life?

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        neverJamTodayGabrielle Bluestone
        7/22/16 10:17am

        The officer who arrested her lied. The guard in charge of her well-being while detained lied.

        I’m not sure if this is better or worse than “We were aiming for the unarmed autistic guy, sorry.” Because here you can tell people KNOW they fucked up whereas there it seems like they don’t see anything actually wrong with what they did aside from accidentally shooting the wrong unarmed man.

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          Dinosaurs and Nachos, girlfriend!Gabrielle Bluestone
          7/22/16 10:41am

          Gee.

          I’m shocked.

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