Another Woman Of Color Dies In Police Custody After Being Told To 'Quit Faking' Her Cries Of Pain
Earlier this month, a young woman of color died under mysterious circumstances while being held in police custody for a minor charge.
It’s sadly a scenario that not only describes Sandra Bland , a 28-year-old African American woman from Texas who allegedly committed suicide in her jail cell three days after being arrested for a minor traffic violation, but 24-year-old Native American Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota.
As reported by Sarah Sunshine Manning of Indian Country Today this past Tuesday, Circle Bear was arrested and held in the Brown County Jail in Aberdeen, apparently for having violated the terms of a previous bond (She had two pending counts of driving under the influence in Brown County yet to be resolved).
On July 6, she was found unconscious in a holding cell and later pronounced dead at a local hospital. According to Manning, there were witness reports of Circle Bear crying out in pain as she was being escorted to another holding cell, cries which were ignored by jail staff. They allegedly responded by telling her to “knock it off” and “quit faking” before they took her to the cell that would later contain her lifeless body.
An autopsy performed later that Monday was inconclusive, though according to Brown County coroner Mike Carlsen, her death was likely not the result of minor injuries she sustained from a car crash earlier that Friday. Circle Bear was a mother of two sons, ages one and two. The family is currently seeking legal representation.
The relatively light coverage of Circle Bear’s death, especially in comparison to higher profile incidents like that of Sandra Bland and Baltimore resident Freddie Gray, is a familiar pattern, despite the fact that Native Americans between the ages of 25 to 34 are the second most-likely population group to be killed by law enforcement, according to data collected by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Native Americans, 0.8 percent of the population, comprise 1.9 percent of police killings. African Americans, 13 percent of the population, are victims in 26 percent of police shootings,” wrote Mike Males of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in a 2014 post analyzing the CDC data.
Of course, the collective outrage that these incidents should provoke in us doesn’t need to be part of a zero-sum game. Instead, Circle Bear’s death should only remind us that the necessary fight to secure equitable and fair treatment from the criminal justice system is one that will benefit members of more than one minority group.
“When any person is taken into custody and under the care of law enforcement, it is their right to receive appropriate medical attention and just treatment,” Manning wrote. “This does not appear to be the case with Sarah Lee Circle Bear, and in the state of South Dakota where Native Americans are the largest minority and hate crimes are reported at high levels, it is time to demand a thorough investigation into her neglect and her death.”