They are protesting the grand jury’s decision not to indict anyone at the Waller County Jail where Bland died in custody.
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A Texas grand jury declined to indict sheriff’s officials or jailers in the death of a black woman at a county jail last summer, three days after a state trooper pulled her over for a minor traffic violation… Dashcam video showed the traffic stop quickly became confrontational, with trooper Brian Encinia at one point holding a stun gun and yelling at Bland, “I will light you up!” after she refused to get out of her auto. Authorities say she committed suicide, a claim her family rejects.
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“The fact remains that if she was never arrested she would have never went to jail, she would have never died”, Jenaki Muhammad, vice co-chair of women’s affairs for the activist group National Black United Front, said. It appeared Bland had hanged herself with a plastic garbage bag accessible in her cell.
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Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman, was arrested and charged with assaulting a public servant on July 10 in Prairie View, Texas.
“We don’t have any information about what happened to my daughter”. Instead, they blamed Bland’s family and friends for their unwillingness to post the $515 bond for her release. “There could be indictments”, said Darrell Jordan, one of the five special prosecutors handling the Bland case. Her family publicly rejected the idea that Bland killed herself, launching an investigation into the cause of her death.
Protesters said they would hold demonstrations until January, when the grand jury will reconvene on the issue of the trooper’s conduct.
Bland’s sister didn’t immediately respond to a phone message requesting comment on the grand jury’s decision, and Reed-Veal couldn’t be reached for comment late Monday.
The medical examiner called it a “suicide by asphyxiation”. Attorney Larry Rogers acknowledged grand juries usually meet in secret, but that the process means lawyers for Bland’s family haven’t been able to examine the findings of a Texas Rangers investigation into her death because the report is grand jury evidence.
Encinia, who in June completed a year-long probationary stint as a new trooper, has been on administrative duty since the Bland death.
Jordan, citing the confidentiality of the grand jury system, would not say what those charges could be. “She died in their custody and I’m supposed to be asked to say, ‘OK, I believe everything you haven’t shown me.’ It’s kind of hard to do”, Reed-Veal said. “They found that he violated internal procedures, the Department’s courtesy policy basically”, Smith says.
She said she was not surprised by the grand jury’s decision after seeing how other high-profile police confrontations around the country have played out.
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Houston Chronicle reporter Sinjin Smith has been reporting on Bland’s case.
