Sandra Bland’s traffic stop and subsequent jail house suicide have garnered national media attention and social criticism since July 10 when the Naperville woman was pulled over for failure to signal while changing lanes in Waller County, Texas. She committed suicide three days later in jail, police said.
Dashboard camera footage released by Texas police shows a hostile traffic stop that begins with a state trooper asking the 28-year-old former Aurora resident to put out her cigarette, and ends with Bland booked on a battery charge after being wrestled to the ground. Texas police said Bland hanged herself with a garbage bag three days later in jail where she was being held on $5,000 bail.
Law enforcement officials with area departments such as Naperville, Aurora, Elgin, Oswego and Kane County said they are confident that what happened to Bland wouldn’t have ended the same way had Bland been pulled over locally.
Aurora Police Department Chief Greg Thomas said if stopped in Aurora, Bland would most likely not have been asked to put out her cigarette, which appeared to set a tone for subsequent events. And it’s unlikely that Bland would have even been pulled over for the minor traffic offense.
Out of more than 11,000 traffic stops conducted by Aurora police since Jan. 1, there have been 12 warning tickets written for failure to signal when changing lanes and six actual citations written.
“The frequency (of that type of stop) is very low,” Thomas said.
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While local departments didn’t want to comment specifically about the Bland case, they were quick to highlight policies and procedures in place that would prevent a similar situation from happening on their turf.
“It’s an unfortunate situation and something that we indeed need to take a look at and make sure we have good policy and procedure in place,” Thomas said. “We need to hire the best, train the best, and have good supervisors and good training.”
In Naperville, where there were almost 300 turn signal violation stops in 2014, Bland’s odds of being stopped for such a minor infraction were higher than in Aurora. But department officials say they have taken steps to prevent escalation. Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall just completed an eight-hour class focused entirely on strategies to de-escalate conflict situations that may arise during traffic stops. Aurora cops receive similar training.
“We call it verbal judo,” Thomas said. “It’s handing a (hostile) situation with verbal skills.”
Oswego police Chief Jeff Burgner said his department is also regularly reviewing policies and procedures.
“It assures us that we are operating with the best practices of law enforcement whether it involves on-the-street encounters with citizens or in our police facility,” he said.
Although it’s rare, some traffic stops and police encounters don’t always go smoothly, according to local department statistics.
During 2014, there were more than 200,000 calls for service and 30,000 traffic stops in Aurora. Thomas said during that time, there were eight citizen complaints filed against Aurora police for officer misconduct and policy or procedure violations. Three of those claims were substantiated and ended in an officer’s discipline, Thomas said.
According to statistics, the Oswego Police Department investigated three formal agency and 10 officer complaints in 2014. Burgner said all were investigated and four were sustained.
Elgin also had 10 complaints against officers in 2014.
However, that is a significant change from previous years. Assistant Chief Bill Wolf said the number of outside citizen complaints against officers has dropped year-to-year, with 40 in 2009 to 10 in 2014, Wolf said.
“We are not perfect and we try to do our best to make things right when we do make mistakes,” Wolf said.
“We stress in-field training to take every opportunity for positive contacts in the community,” Wolf said.
It isn’t uncommon, at the start-of-shift roll call during shift change at the Elgin Police Department, for officers to watch the latest officer-related video making its way through social media, Wolf said. Those videos are usually of a police officer’s negative interaction with citizens. They are shown as examples of what not to do when dealing with the public, Wolf said.
“A lot of cases, we absolutely cringe at,” Wolf said of those police videos.
“There is so much negativity about law enforcement and we know it reflects badly,” even if the video was captured far from Illinois.
But, mistakes still happen, even locally, and when they do there’s a streamlined process to vet them appropriately, Chief Thomas said.
“If you believe you’ve been wronged, whatever the case may be — if the officer is yelling at you, belittling you — go with the situation, then go to a supervisor with your complaint,” Thomas said. “Everything we do is recorded. We will review the tape, locate witnesses, talk to the officer and go through the appropriate process.”
As for Bland’s alleged jailhouse suicide, Thomas said he’s confident it wouldn’t have happened in Aurora’s lockup.
“I believe we do have very good policy, and I can prove that,” Thomas said. Aurora police have had no suicides during the last five years.
There have been a total of nine attempts, but those were quickly foiled, he added.
Naperville police said their jail has also been suicide-free during the last half-decade.
At every local department, inmates are required to go through a medical evaluation which includes filling out surveys about mental health. But the process isn’t without flaws, according to Kane County records.
“I believe we have had two suicides (in five years),” Kane County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Gengler said. “Remember, an overwhelming majority of people in correctional centers are mentally ill. It can be challenging dealing with people who may not ever demonstrate suicidal tendencies.”
Gengler said even prior to the Bland incident, the department was looking to do an agency-wide training class dealing with mentally ill citizens, and to work on de-escalating situations. “
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Thomas said it’s too early to tell if area departments will be making any policy changes in the wake of Bland’s highly publicized traffic stop and suicide.
“It’s very difficult to try and start making changes when we don’t know the entire situation,” Thomas said. “Imagine going to the doctor and getting prescription before you’ve been thoroughly checked out. I’d rather have a good diagnosis before filling my prescription.”
Contributing were Naperville Sun reporter Bill Bird and freelance reporters Janelle Walker and Linda Girardi.