Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,101
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To Encinia’s mind, Bland’s demeanor fits the profile of a potentially dangerous criminal. She’s agitated, jumpy, irritable, confrontational, volatile. He thinks she’s hiding something.
This is dangerously flawed thinking at the best of times. Human beings are not transparent. But when is this kind of thinking most dangerous? When the people we observe are mismatched: when they do not behave the way we expect them to behave. Amanda Knox was mismatched. At the crime scene, as she put on her protective booties, she swiveled her hips and said, “Ta-dah.” Bernie Madoff was mismatched. He was a sociopath dressed up as a mensch.
What is Sandra Bland? She is also mismatched. She looks to Encinia’s eye like a criminal. But she’s not. She’s just upset. In the aftermath of her death, it was revealed that she had had ten previous encounters with police over the course of her adult life, including five traffic stops, which had left her with almost $8,000 in outstanding fines. She had tried to commit suicide the year before, after the loss of a baby. She had numerous cut marks running up and down one of her arms. In one of her weekly “Sandy Speaks” video posts, just a few months before she left for Texas, Bland alluded to her troubles:
I apologize. I am sorry, my Kings and Queens. It has been two long weeks. I have been missing in action. But I gotta be honest with you guys. I am suffering from something that some of you all may be dealing with right now.…It’s a little bit of depression as well as PTSD. I’ve been really stressed out these last couple of weeks…
So here we have a troubled person with a history of medical and psychiatric issues, trying to pull her life together. She’s moved to a new town. She’s starting a new job. And just as she arrives to begin this new chapter in her life, she’s pulled over by a police officer—repeating a scenario that has left her deeply in debt. And for what? For failing to signal a lane change when a police car is driving up rapidly behind her. All of a sudden her fragile new beginning is cast into doubt. In the three days she spent in jail before taking her own life, Sandra Bland was distraught, weeping constantly, making phone call after phone call. She was in crisis.
But Encinia, with all of the false confidence that believing in transparency gives us, reads her emotionality and volatility as evidence of something sinister.
Renfro asks about the crucial moment—when Encinia requests that Bland put out her cigarette. Why didn’t he just say, “Hey, your cigarette ashes are getting on me”?
Encinia: I wanted to make sure that she had it out without throwing it at me or just get it out of her hand.
Renfro then asks why, if that were the case, he didn’t immediately tell her why she was under arrest.
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