Page 145 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Encinia: ’Cause I was trying to defend myself and get her controlled.
He’s terrified of her. And being terrified of a perfectly innocent stranger holding a cigarette is the
price you pay for not defaulting to truth. It’s why Harry Markopolos holed up in his house, armed to
the teeth, waiting for the SEC to come bursting in.
Renfro: I didn’t ask you this earlier but I will now. When she tells you, “Let’s do this,” you
respond, “We’re going to.” What did you mean by that?
Encinia: I could tell from her actions of leaning over and just she made her hand to me, even
being a non-police officer if I see somebody balling fists, that’s going to be confrontational or
potential harm to either myself or to another party.
Renfro: Is there a reason why you just didn’t take her down?
Encinia: Yes, sir.
Renfro: Why?

Encinia: She had already swung at me once. There was nothing stopping her from potentially
swinging again, potentially disabling me.
Another of the investigators chimes in.
Louis Sanchez: Were you scared?
Encinia: My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time.

And then:
Sanchez: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so after this occurred, how long was your
heart rate up, your adrenaline pumping? When did you calm down after this?
Encinia: Probably on my drive home, which was several hours later.
It was common, in the Bland postmortem, to paint Encinia as an officer without empathy. But
that characterization misses the point. Someone without empathy is indifferent to another’s feelings.
Encinia is not indifferent to Bland’s feelings. When he approaches her car, one of the first things he
says to her is, “What’s wrong?” When he returns to her car after checking her license, he asks again:
“Are you okay?” He picks up on her emotional discomfort immediately. It’s just that he completely
misinterprets what her feelings mean. He becomes convinced that he is sliding into a frightening
confrontation with a dangerous woman.
And what does Tactics for Criminal Patrol instruct the police officer to do under these
conditions? “Too many cops today seem afraid to assert control, reluctant to tell anyone what to do.
People are allowed to move as they want, to stand where they want, and then officers try to adapt to
what the suspect does.” Encinia isn’t going to let that happen.
Encinia: Well, you can step on out now…Step out or I will remove you. I’m giving you a lawful
order.
Brian Encinia’s goal was to go beyond the ticket. He had highly tuned curiosity ticklers. He knew
all about the visual pat-down and the concealed interrogation. And when the situation looked as if it
might slip out of his control, he stepped in, firmly. If something went awry that day on the street
with Sandra Bland, it wasn’t because Brian Encinia didn’t do what he was trained to do. It was the
opposite. It was because he did exactly what he was trained to do.

4.

On August 9, 2014, one year before Sandra Bland died in her cell in Prairie View, Texas, an
eighteen-year-old African American man named Michael Brown was shot to death by a white police
officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown had been a suspect in a robbery at a nearby grocery store.
When Darren Wilson—the police officer—confronted him, the two men struggled. Brown reached
inside the driver’s window of Wilson’s patrol car and punched him. Wilson ended up shooting him
six times. Seventeen days of riots followed. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Officer
Wilson.