While the question of whether the 28-year-old Illinois woman actually committed suicide after her encounter with the Texas state trooper landed her in jail is being debated, what’s certain is that it was Encinia’s bad policing that put Bland on a rendezvous with death.
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On Thursday, state lawmakers will hold a hearing to try and determine how situations like this can be prevented in the future. Coleman, chairman of the committee, promised future meetings.
McCraw said his agency is working swiftly but would not commit to a timeline for when the investigation will be finished.
Image from Sandra Bland arrest video. “Someone’s liberties were stomped on”. He has been reassigned to desk duty pending an internal review of his actions, which DPS has said violated agency procedures.
“At the conclusion of this investigation you will have the answers”, McCraw told the committee. “Even if it would make my life easier at this hearing, we’re not going to suspend due process”. Bland’s death, Lynch told Pierre Thomas of ABC News, “highlights the concern of many in the black community that a routine stop for many members of the black community is not handled with the same professionalism and courtesy that other people may get from the police”. That’s more than three times the legal limit for drivers in Colorado and Washington, states that permit the recreational use of marijuana.
“What was the goal of that information being released?” Texas Commission on Jail Standards Executive Director Brandon Wood identified dealing with inmates with mental health issues as one of the most hard tasks jailers are faced with. “The timing is suspicious”.
Waller County, an hour out of Houston, has an infamous history of racism. Yet as Goldberger conceded, it is impossible to say how much THC was in Bland’s blood at the time of her death because post-mortem redistribution from fatty tissue may have boosted the concentration.
Goldberger, who is also the president of the American Board of Forensic Toxicology, said Bland had a “remarkably high concentration” of THC for someone who had been in jail for three days.
“I hate that I have that worry, but it’s very real”, she says. “Mom, I could have been Sandra Bland!” she told her mother.
Rafferty said he had people attempt to put cigarettes out on him before and he would not want anyone stepping out of the vehicle to sign a warrant with a cigarette, but the officer was not clear in asking why he wanted the cigarette out. From Sandra Bland to Eric Garner and several others, this is becoming quite an alarming trend.
Representative Jonathan Stickland, a Republican from Bedford, expressed frustration that the deputy who arrested Bland is on administrative leave and still collecting a salary.
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For those unfamiliar with this story, Sandra Bland was a 28 yr old African American activist who was pulled over by Texas trooper Brian Encinia for failing to properly signal before making a lane change.
