Talking to the Stranger Sandra Bland

Malcolm Gladwell’s New Book Questions how People Judge the Unfamiliar by way of an Unacceptable Miscarriage of Justice

Photo Credit: Felix Koutchinski

In Talking With Strangers, and per his norm, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes a motley crew of events, their players, and the requisite psychological underpinnings which may interpret them. Wherein the final product may convince “better” as an audiobook, Gladwell seeks to explain how Sandra Bland’s arrest on July 10, 2015 would lead to her suicide three days later. Gladwell is explicit about the intent behind his first book since 2013’s David and Goliath stating his desire to reconvene the conversation surrounding Sandra Bland’s death and similar or related incidents of the past few years.

And can you blame him? Few would have predicted the string of events that led to Bland’s death as a standard police stop rarely escalates into an arrest, three days’ incarceration, and suicide of the suspect. Gladwell sets out to show his reader how police officers might pursue and escalate minor traffic violations stem from training they receive as well as a predisposition to doubt the authenticity of the strangers they meet. While Bland’s suicide skyrocketed attention to her situation, Gladwell also explores a general misunderstanding surrounding the act of suicide which brings into question the care under which Bland, and countless others, are entrusted.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers — Affiliate Link — Non-Affiliate Link

“The lesson of what happened on the afternoon of July 10th, 2015 is that when police talk to strangers, they need to be respectful and polite. Case closed, right? Wrong. By this point, I think we can do better.” — Malcolm Gladwell

If you watch the video you will begin to see the perspective of Brian Encinia, the officer responsible for Bland’s arrest. The Texas state patrolman observed the disheveled interior of a car with Illinois license plates and attempted to judge this stranger’s dismissive attitude toward his responsibilities to enforce the rules of the road. In the interviews which would follow the event, Encinia recalled uncertainty after his first interaction with Bland, finding her suspiciously furtive. After-the-fact, Encinia would blame Bland for the escalation of events.

While Gladwell gives his reader plenty of time to consider the officer, he also asks his reader to consider Bland. She is also familiar with the traffic stop as $7,579 in unpaid fines from a variety of incidents have tailed her in a move from Chicago to Texas to start a new life back at her alma mater. Gladwell suspects Bland would have been spooked as Encinia sped up behind her on the freeway, which is why she moved over to let him pass. When his lights come on, signaling Bland to pull over, she should have been right to question what she had done.

As it would turn out, Bland’s immediate need to change lanes lacked a signal.

“Okay, Mamm… You okay?” “I’m waiting on you. This is your job. I’m waiting on you. What do you want me to do?” “Oh, you seem irritated.” “I am. I really am. Because of what I’ve been stopped and am getting a ticket for. I’ve been getting out of the way. You’ve been speeding up, tailing on me, so I move over and you stop me. So yeah, I am a little irritated. But that doesn’t stop you from giving me a ticket.” — Encinia and Bland

Encinia would not have required much to pull Bland over due to the vast latitude granted police over moving violations. This leniency first proved essential as administrators scrambled to lower urban murder rates in the early ’90s. Gladwell points to the success of the Kansas City Gun Experiment as essential in understanding the historical basis for the aggressive policing of moving violations. The experiment itself was conducted by four police officers over 200 days wherein violent crime in Kansas City’s 144th police reporting area halved while nearby districts remained flat.

The four officers also issued 1,090 traffic citations.

Gladwell asks the reader to consider how police officers are trained to act when issuing these citations if the goal is to reduce violent crime.

Gladwell points to Charles Remsberg’s Tactics for Criminal Patrol: Vehicle Stops, Drug Discovery and Officer Survival which suggests how best to approach a traffic stop, especially if the goal is to “turn ordinary traffic stops into major felony arrests of drug couriers, gun traffickers and other violent criminals.” Remsberg suggests a patrolman should look for any sign that an individual is not responding to their questions honestly and determine how they can extend the conversation by looking for holes in the stranger’s story. He also discusses the popular Reid Technique — a questioned interrogation strategy taught throughout America. According to the technique, a suspect’s body language will shift away from the officer. They will avert their gaze. They will stammer in explaining themselves.

To a trained police officer the early stages of a traffic stop are a discovery process where anything deemed out of order, or just unusual, might make more sense as evidence upon the stranger’s future arrest. If the suspect is innocent, they will prove it through their behavior. Gladwell points to multiple instances where Encinia could have defused the situation with Bland, he instead chooses to see her as someone dangerous.

Photo Credit: Roman Koester

Throughout Talking to Strangers Gladwell reminds his readers how every day they must believe the stories of strangers, acquaintances, and close friends tell them. How our society would be worse off without the heuristic he calls the ‘Default to Truth.’ Gladwell also examines multiple high-profile cases where those entrusted with power must understand the unfamiliar and make judgments based on their understanding. He shows how those charged with determining the truth fail in their attempt at discovering the full story, particularly when it suits some judgment they have already made about a suspect, usually a stranger.

The potential for discovering a higher-profile crime is why Encinia is inclined to pull Bland over for failing to signal a lane change. In a lot of ways, Encinia is fishing for arrestable offenses in rural Prarie View, Texas and it shows in statistics Gladwell unearths about the officer’s stops on the same stretch of freeway. Too, it is Encinia will escalate this traffic violation by asking Bland to put out her cigarette, by ordering her to step out of her car, by pulling his taser. He believes Bland’s demeanor is a result of something criminal. Encinia relies on the training which would suggest that Bland’s inward motivations can easily be discerned in her demeanor towards a state patrolman.

But Gladwell cautions that whatever our authorities search for has real limits when it comes to the strangers they judge.

He cites the case of Amanda Knox, an American citizen detained for almost four years by Italian authorities due to behavior perceived outside the grief authorities expected of her. Additionally, when Gladwell dissects facial movements from a scene on the show Friends, it is to begin a discussion about how most Americans believe emotional transparency works, and that is normal for strangers to be emotionally transparent. Gladwell presents research which confirms that the emotions we pay our actors to display are not necessarily the same facial expressions we express when we feel an emotion.

And why we should expect strangers to reflect any expected facial contortions at all when relating their inner emotions?

Because it turns out humans are only average at adjudging strangers.

Among substantial other research, Gladwell calls to the reader’s attention to Jon Klineberg et. al.’s Human Decisions and Machine Predictions which shows how a less-informed artificial intelligence system demonstrably outperforms the judicial bail decisions of human judges. For example, human judges release almost half of defendants which the model deemed to belong to the riskiest 1% of those most likely to commit another crime or skip out on bail (Page 22/258). These human judges have what is supposed to be an advantage over their computer adversaries — they get to interact and converse with each defendant. At the conclusion of this section in the books, Gladwell wonders how advantageous our face-to-face meetings with strangers are.

“We tend to judge people’s honesty based on their demeanor. Well-spoken, confident people with a firm handshake, those who are friendly and engaging are seen as believable. Nervous, shifty, stammering, uncomfortable people, who give windy convoluted explanations are not seen as believable.” — Malcolm Gladwell

The last feature discussed at length in Talking to Strangers is a psychological concept called coupling. The idea that place and context dictate more about a stranger’s behavior than any inherent desire to pursue that behavior before entering a situation. For the sake of brevity, if you are interested in learning more about how coupling applies to crime, which Gladwell also covers, I would encourage you to purchase his book. The remainder of this piece will concern itself with Gladwell’s interpretation and recrimination toward the administrators of Bland’s suicide.

“What do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.” — Malcolm Gladwell

On July 10th, 2015, Sandra Bland is given a 15-page jail intake form to complete. Therein, she describes the loss of her godmother, a failed suicide attempt related to losing a child earlier that year, and that she takes a medication called Keppra with side-effects that include depression and aggressive behavior. When filling out the administrative portion of the form, Waller County officials failed to put her on suicide watch or alert a mental health professional. Bland’s autopsy would also reveal linear cut marks on her left forearm which had not been present at the time of her arrest.

Sandra Bland Intake Form as released to the New York Times

To begin the discussion of Bland’s suicide, Gladwell looks to poet Sylvia Plath and the city of San Francisco as a means to show how the act of suicide is coupled to the place and context of its victims.

Plath, recently abandoned by her husband alongside her two young children, committed suicide toward the tail end of England winter so cold The Guardian released a pamphlet about it. Having attempted suicide before, Plath would have been keenly aware that the gas used to power English stoves was lethal with carbon monoxide, but she would not attempt the act until a series of events led her to believe there was no better option available to her. So adept a companion to suicide, the particular gas used to heat English homes’ replacement years later with natural gas would provide one of the starkest examples against the still-to-this-day popular notion about suicide called displacement.

Displacement is a rationalization about the suicidal individual which argues that when someone is prevented from committing suicide, they will perform that action when they discover any new opportunity.

Over countless years, San Francisco authorities would contend that a safety net to prevent the predictable suicides occurring at the Golden Gate Bridge was not worth the cost. The justification per letters in opposition to the construction of the net? Displacement. Gladwell points to research, published in 1978, which showed that of 515 persons who had been restrained from jumping off the bridge, 94% were still alive. Despite this evidence, it will be 2021 when the Golden Gate Suicide Barrier’s construction is completed, almost 88 years after the bridge was built.

While the nature of suicide may be more indicative of the individual committing the act, Malcolm Gladwell is right to believe that Sandra Bland should be alive today. Bland moved to Prarie View, Texas and was detained at the instigation of State Patrolman Encinia, held for three days without mental care, and left to her own devices with all the context in the world that her new life would be no different.

Talking to Strangers is a book of many stories as anyone familiar with Gladwell’s work is accustomed. Its interpretation of the events surrounding Sandra Bland is effectively a summary of research Gladwell argues should make the reader ask why police are allowed to conduct their associated responsibilities by smothering the expression of a stranger’s truth.