The deaths in police custody of women like Sandra Bland and Rekia Boyd have drawn national attention to the potentially lethal threats posed to women of color by racist police.
On Tuesday, Indian Country Today reporter Sarah Sunshine Manning wrote about the July 6 death of a 24-year-old Lakota woman named Sarah Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota.
Circle Bear was jailed on a bond violation at the Brown County Jail in Aberdeen. On Sunday, July 6, she was found unresponsive in a holding cell.
According to KELO, Circle Bear was taken to a nearby hospital where she died later that same day.
Witnesses said that when Circle Bear was transferred to the holding cell, she told guards that she was in excruciating pain. Jail personnel reportedly told her to “quit faking” and “knock it off” before lifting her partway off the floor and dragging her to the cell where she was later found unconscious.
According to Manning, “I recently learned about Sarah Lee Circle Bear while attending a family ceremonial gathering. A relative set out a memorial chair for Sarah, a tradition of the Dakota and Lakota people. Sarah’s story was shared, and the circle prayed for her and her family for four days.”
The 24-year-old left behind two infant sons, ages one and two.
Circle Bear’s family said that they await autopsy and toxicology reports.
Manning said:
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. 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. It is time to demand better treatment of Native women, and justice for Sarah.i know that Native Americans go through the same things we do with racist and bigoted cops but we haven't been hearing it till recently at least that i saw. these persons have this incessant need to dominate a God complex if you will. they will contiue on and when they have grown tired of us they will as some do now turn on themselves.
hate is a conditioned fueled by fear and ignorance it is all consuming and 24/7 endeavor. for those hated on most don't care or even know those that do don't spend their days wringing their hands and pulling their hair because some unknown unseen racist hates for no reason other then upbringing.
cops will continue until we start convicting and locking them down now they get paid vacation they call administrative leave or desk duty then the judicial system finds they did nothing wrong but they caused change and media coverage for months and years and of late video doesn't carry any weight we must not believe our lying eyes.
as long as they know they can kill Black people indiscriminbately and face nothing more than one side accusing and the other exonerating and the one that suffers are those left behind and the memory of them tarnished and blamed for the reason they were shot in the back 5 or 6 times. conviction, incarceration solution status quo the problem.
