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In this video, it looks like Bland blows by a stop sign and doesn’t signal, as she pulls onto the road...at the 1:16 point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URAZ3umt7v0

At the 1:29 point, as the trooper makes a U-turn, you can see that there is a stop sign there, and she just blasted through it.

So I think that’s what initially got his attention. But for whatever reason (perhaps he lost sight of her during the U-turn), he didn’t pull her over for that...but instead followed right behind her....until she gave him a new reason to pull her over....and she did at the 1:53 point by switching lanes without a signal.

Now at 2:03 the sound comes on in the video - and I believe the sound comes on when the trooper turns the lights on. So she made the bad lane change first, and then the lights came on...meaning the lights did not cause her to change lanes.

At this point, its a pretty normal event, and a situation I have been in before. A cop pulls a U-turn and ends up behind me, I’m nervous and do everything I can to let him in front of me...and sometimes that doesn’t work, and I get pulled over.

And its pretty normal after that. A warning. And as far as I can tell, she has an Illinois plate but a Texas drivers license. Again a situation I’ve been in before (when in the military), that can cause additional scrutiny and questioning - you’re supposed to maintain both your tag and license wherever ‘home’ is...meaning they should always be the same. But the trooper just asks her a few questions about how long she’s been here, etc, and is satisfied (I think she has 30 days to tag the car in TX, if she’s just moved there). Again, he’s pretty chilled out.

Then the ‘contempt of cop’, with the cigarette. I think both are in the wrong here. He shouldn’t be so upset...but she is obviously trying to be difficult. Now he’s supposed to be trained, and should be the first to de-escalate, so he is at fault. But Bland did not help the situation by refusing to get out of the car, calling him names, etc...and allegedly kicking at him. Neither one of them handled it very well.

Now just about all I know about law enforcement comes from watching COPS...so I’m no expert. But I will say that cops seem to have a 6th sense of when somebody is hiding something. And, most people are very polite to the police during a traffic stop (trying to get away with just a warning). So when a person is not very polite, even when getting a warning...and refuses to put out a cigarette...it can look suspicious - I’d wonder just what type of smell she was hiding with the cig smoke. So I think it was a little more than just contempt of cop - and when she started arguing with all commands, he probably becomes even more suspicious that she is hiding something.

Turns out that (as far as we know) his 6th sense was off - and she wasn’t hiding anything. I guess my point is, if you act in an unusual manner when interacting with police, they will interpret this as an attempt to hide a crime, and not a libertarian stand against police impropriety. Ergo, I’m always polite.