Like all of you, I was livid upon hearing about Bland's death at the hands of some piece of shit who never should've been allowed to be a cop. While there are some things I would've done differently in her situation(like putting out the cigarette when asked for my own safety), NOTHING she did justified being brutally assaulted and killed in jail.
As a caucasian, i've often found myself deeply ashamed to be white after hearing some of the horrendous shit that comes out of other white person's mouths. I've often taken unpopular positions contrary to other white folks(for example, I do not believe that O.J. Simpson murdered Ron Goldman or Nicole Brown, I have my own theories on who did it, but that's for another diary).
One thing about this case that struck me was just how similar it was to another unjustified minority death at the hands of a corrupt and racist police department. I'm referring to the death of Ron Settles in Signal Hill, CA back in 1981.
Like Sandra Bland, Ron Settles was pulled over for no reason, in this case he was taking a shortcut through Signal Hill, unaware of it's bad reputation for treatment of minorities(to the point where most of them stayed as far away from Signal Hill as possible). Also like Bland, police claimed his death was a suicide and that he had hung himself in his cell.
Ron's parents knew his son would never have committed suicide, so they turned to Johnnie Cochran, who by that point had made a name for himself by being the first lawyer in history to sue police departments, he often won wrongful death suits which Ron's parents sought out. They knew at that point there was little to no chance of the officers involved being convicted of any crime, but they still wanted a court to acknowledge that their son's death was wrongful. So Cochran hired the famous Michael Baden(who had done thousands of autopsies and would of course later appear as an expert in the O.J. Simpson trial alongside Cochran) to conduct Ron's autopsy, and his findings indicated that Ron had died due to being strangled, more specifically as a result of a police chokehold(which had already been responsible for the deaths of many minorities, LAPD chief Daryl Gates came up with the lame explanation that the "thick necks" of African-Americans was the cause of their deaths)
Ron's parents won the wrongful death settlement and the police commanders immediately fled, the police chief then dramatically reformed the department. The case was historic as the chokehold was officially banned from being used by police(though unfortunately as we saw with Eric Garner, it's still used illegally) and many departments mandated video taping of jail cells, and fortunately Signal Hill is now a much better and safer town.
Unfortunately as we've seen, these reforms are not enough, their needs to be much more dramatic change in order to prevent more deaths like those of Sandra Bland.