It’s highly likely that Sandra Bland took her own life in the Waller County jail cell.

The young woman had been arrested and tossed into the cell after being pulled over for the heinous crime of failing to signal before making a turn in her motor vehicle.

She got agitated with the Texas Department of Public Safety trooper, Brian Enciana, who violated just about every rule prescribed for calming a tense situation. He is supposedly trained to use restraint whenever possible. Did he do that? No. He did precisely the opposite.

The dashboard camera aboard his police cruiser tells a grim story of a police officer going too far.

Bland never should have been put in that jail cell. Yes, she behaved badly when the trooper stopped her. Yes, she should have reacted more calmly than she did.

Did she strike the trooper, as he contended in his arrest report? The camera doesn’t reveal that. If she struck at the trooper, she did it outside of the range of the camera. That, right there, gives a lot of folks pause to accept the officer’s word that she attacked him. She’s no longer able to refute the allegations, correct?

DPS officials need to take a long and careful look at what happened before Bland ended up in that jail cell.

It appears highly likely now that the young woman didn’t die at the hands of those who were detaining her.

However, she never should have been put in that jail cell in the first place.