Sandra Bland, bless her soul, nailed it totally when she called Encinia a pussy. And please, don't try to justify his misconduct by her taunting use of the word pussy. All it means is that he is a coward and a wuss. He obviously is. And in his sick pussy mind she had to die because for having the guts to tell him the truth about his pussy-ness. Even after he stuck a taser in her face, hauled her out of the car and beat her. I believe the racist sheriff and others in the department were happy to accommodate him. Given our police culture, I wouldn’t put anything past the police. And, while racism is a big factor, it isn’t just because of that. Here is how I came to that opinion.
You see, with the police, too often its all about them. When push comes to shove they don’t seem to have any respect for the type of average citizens they supposedly “serve and protect,” especially when one of them dies at their filthy hands. And where their financial interests, i.e. - perks, promotion, salary, benefits and retirement are concerned, they also don’t give a damn about the law or the legal system. As a consequence they cover up, conspire, lie and perjure themselves - just like a bunch of pussies.
As a lawyer, I had the opportunity once in a little town to work on the case of what is euphemistically termed an "officer involved shooting" of a legal alien in an ethnic neighborhood. The shooting was in the course of a no-knock drug raid. Several officers broke into a rooming house with a battering ram and ran through the house with weapons drawn. They shot a man who had just come home from work. No drugs were found. They say they were shouting “po-lee-see-ya,” but how did they know he understood Spanish since they broke into the wrong house. I represented a man who had the guts to bravely suggest on a local talk radio program that the officers probably murdered this man and then covered up. As troubling as it was, what he said didn’t seem far fetched at all.
To a man, the officers who were there (even those who weren’t in a physical position to observe) claimed the victim stuck his arm out from behind the half opened door of his upstairs apartment and brandished an antique pistol at them. They were in full body armor on both ends of the hall. Moreover, they were pointing 16 mm machine guns at him. Then the victim seemed to them to have a suicide wish supposedly got off a few potshots, even though in the instant it takes to squeeze a trigger an officer with a 16mm shot up the victim like a piece of swiss cheese from his right hand, up his arm, to his carotid artery.
To “prove” their story some officer(s) shot a few random holes in the wall and staged the victim lying on the floor with a gun in his hand - a drop gun, of course. Whey do I say random shots? Because the holes did not correspond to any officer’s testimony about their positions. Why do I believe it was a drop gun? The gun was an antique, made in Germany before WWII and it was untraceable. Then during a break in a deposition, while I was pretending to admire an antique watch on the arm of one of the officers involved, he told me that this father, a WWII vet got it off a dead Nazi in Sardinia, Italy during the war. Dad probably took his gun too.
The problem was that an officer - maybe the same one - shot the victim in the chest a three times when he was lying on the floor bleeding out - but still alive. Why do I believe he was shot on the floor? A private eye pulled three slugs out of the linoleum under the bloody carpet. The slugs were the same caliber as the drop gun. There were three exit wounds on the victims chest in the same pattern. Then they took their sweet time calling for medical help - to give him more time to die. Dead men don't tell tales.
Being part of a "bad shoot" or speaking up would jeopardize their careers if it weren’t for the totally corrupt way these matters are handled - a method that was set up to protect their financial interests and reputation at the expense of truth and justice.
The police used their union attorneys as a sword to silence and intimidate those questioned the propriety of their misconduct. The union paid for a frivolous SLAPP lawsuit for defamation against the owner of the radio station, the host of the show, and my client for suggesting this was murder.
The police acted in a tribal manner, they circled the wagons immediately and enforced a strict omertà. Any dissension or straying from the party line was punished with a transfer and/or blacklisting.
Bullying and intimidation were the go-to tactic in the face of questions. The officers showed up for depositions in the downtown office of a large respected firm packing as many as three guns with at least one visible. As if there was some danger other than them. I suppose they might have to shoot you for asking a question that pissed them off or they deemed smart ass. Needless to say, I would question them in detail about what they were packing to let everyone else know what weirdos they were - and that their ploy didn’t work.
The internal investigations department "lost" crucial evidence - the dispatch tapes. Internal investigations shared an office with the department that handled litigation matters. Of course internal investigations promptly cleared the swat team of any wrongdoing on the basis of self-defense. That gave the police in our case some ammo for their defense that everything was copacetic insofar as the shooting was concerned. The fact that the police broke into the wrong house and killed a man who had no drugs was brushed off due to as "bad paperwork” - the wrong address was on the search warrant, notwithstanding the fact that the officers ignored huge discrepancies in the physical description of the house on the warrant and the physical appearance of the house they broke into. Apparently terrifying innocent citizens was nothing to be concerned about.
After the shooting, the officers had a chance to meet and confer with higher ups as a group. Then, after they were on the same page, some creepy officer in internal investigations conducted the lamest, most bad faith, post-shooting questioning I have ever seen in almost four decades as an attorney. There was barely a single question asked that wasn't leading (telling the correct answer). The officer who did the questioning appeared to have no training or competence in examining witnesses. It would have been the most negligent investigation I have ever seen, except that it probably was by design.
The coroner, who offices in police headquarters, was also part of the cover up. He claimed that the victim could still fire at the officers despite the several shots in his arm, including shots which severed the nerves in his arm and his carotid artery and ripped up the muscles in his hand, forearm and biceps. The coroner claimed, moreover, that the victim could hold a pistol of considerable weight in his grasp perfectly between his thumb and index finger as shown in the staged photo after he crashed to the floor and took another three shots in his chest. He kept a straight face while as he told this, displaying not a trace of empathy.
I observed that the officers involved seemingly had little or no interest in protecting citizens or the integrity of the department. What they cared about was money: pay, benefits, perks, and generous retirement benefits - including six figures plus medical for the captain and sergeants.
The officers really seemed to value their perks. They got to work off duty at strip clubs and at football, baseball and hockey games in the owner’s box or locker room. All the off duty employment was meted out from a big office within the police department right on the first floor by the front door. They seemed to be big jock sniffers and liked to hobnob with the players and their wives when they could at Las Vegas, Lake Havasu City, where ever. In fact, on this particular raid, one of the local players rode in the van to enjoy the action. There is a gym at the police station. The morning routine at the station was coffee and donuts, workout at the gym, listen to the radio, wait for an assignment. It’s a good life. To a lesser degree they cared about reputations, but that seemed to be mainly for the financial reasons I mention.
The end of the story is that the swat team paid a settlement to the family of the victim, and then the owners of the radio station were able to make a peace with the officers when it became apparent it wasn't necessarily going to end well for the officers. Of course, my guy, already saddled with defense costs, could not afford to continue on his own with his counterclaim for defamation but he never had to pay them a red cent for defamation. The officers kept their jobs, got promoted, and live happily ever after. One of those involved became police chief. Pretty fucked up outcome but that's the norm in this great land of our when it comes to the police isn't it?
I tell this story without naming names whenever people ask me why don't I love on/worship/give deference to the police.
I try to tell it whenever people try to convince me that the vast majority policemen are good public servants doing good things like helping elderly people cross the street. But I’ve never lived anywhere that doesn't have any number of stories about police brutality and corruption, even in a tiny county of 6,000. But they don’t hear me.
I try to warn people that law enforcement stinks worse than a freaking cesspool but they continue to grovel away about our brave first responders.
And when their paid soliciting firms call to hit me up for money for this or that, I try not to laugh over the phone.