Sandra Bland, the woman found dead in a Texas jail cell under suspicious circumstances last week following her arrest for a traffic incident, would still be alive if she had not been "arrogant from the very beginning," a former cop said Tuesday on CNN.
"An officer does have the choice to bring anyone out of the vehicle when he stops them for his own safety," CNN contributor Harry Houck, a former NYPD detective and CNN contributor, said on "CNN Tonight," hosted by Don Lemon. "The whole thing here is that she was very arrogant from the beginning, very dismissive of the officer, alright?"
Houck's comments touched off an incendiary discussion with Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN political contributor who was also appearing on Lemon's show.
"She has a right to be irritated," responded Hill, who also said that Bland was not obligated to "kiss the officer's butt." "A lot of us get irritated when we get pulled over. This officer comes to her and says, 'Is there something wrong? You seem like you have an attitude.' He's trying to pick a fight with her. Sometimes police officers act as if you're not completely kowtowing and deferential, that somehow you're violating a law. This is a perfect example of how vulnerable black women are in public spaces to law enforcement."
Houck cut Hill off, firing back: "Even if he de-escalated that whole situation, she would have kept coming at that officer the way she did."
"I don't think he baited her at all," Houck went on. "She just wanted to be uncooperative. She had a problem with the officer, she had a problem with being stopped, she didn't like the fact that she was being stopped. Her whole arrogant attitude."
Houck's response did not placate Hill, who retorted, "I refuse to legitimize police violence against people by telling them that if they behave differently, maybe they won't die. Harry said maybe you won't end up on the ground. Yes, there are strategies we can use to survive. But the fact that we live in a world where we have to deploy strategies not to be murdered or killed or assaulted by police unlawfully is absurd. What Harry is calling arrogance, I'm calling dignity. Black people have a right to assert their dignity in public. And just because it doesn't cohere with what police want doesn't mean they are being arrogant or dismissive."
Prompting Houck to shoot back, "There's no indication that this is racial at all. None whatsoever."
Hill agreed - facetiously. "This happens to white women all the time," he said.
As reported by HNGN earlier today, the dashboard camera video showing Bland's arrest has several abnormalities, leading people on social media and various media outlets to question whether it was manipulated or edited in some way.
Watch the video of Houck and Hill's sparring match on "CNN Tonight" below:
