In the wake of the indictment for perjury and subsequent firing of the Texas trooper who pulled over her daughter, Sandra Bland’s mother said she is incredulous at the lack of more serious charges against Brian Encinia. Encinia faces the possibility of spending a year in jail and a $4,000 fine stemming from the grand jury’s decision on Wednesday. After Bland allegedly refused to put out her cigarette, Encinia ordered her out of the vehicle.
Advertisement
In his affidavit, Encinia said that he asked Bland to get out of the vehicle to “further conduct a safe traffic investigation”.
The New York Times reports that the perjury charge stemmed from a one-page affidavit Encinia filed after arresting 28-year-old Bland, who is black.
A grand jury convened in December to review the circumstances surrounding Bland’s detention and death, and declined to issue any indictments against jail staff or members of the Waller County Sheriff’s Office.
Just two weeks ago, that grand jury decided not to charge anyone at the jail in Sandra Bland’s death. But Reed-Veal said she anxious prosecution would not be “handled the right way”.
Encinia wrote that Bland was placed under arrest “for Assault on a Public Servant”. One protesters sign read, Legalize black skin.Speaking afterward, one protester, Jinaki Muhammad, called the misdemeanor charge a slap in the face to the Bland family.Encinia also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Blands family.
Her family has maintained she should never have been arrested and would never kill herself. Bland died three days later in a Waller County jail cell of an apparent hanging. Steven McCraw, Department of Public Safety director, said that Encinia did not follow standard policy and showed rude behavior that resulted to confrontation.
Bland was an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests sparked by the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and cases such as that of Freddie Gray, who sustained a fatal spinal injury in a Baltimore police van. “So no, I’m not super excited about this, not at all”, she said.
“Where is the indictment for the assault, the battery, the false arrest?” The Houston Press reported last July that Waller County Jail, where Bland was held for three days, has been cited in the past for substandard training in how to handle potentially suicidal inmates and inmates with mental illnesses. Bland also accused him of slamming her head to the ground.
Advertisement
Cooper, her sister, said Wednesday that the family still has unanswered questions about what happened in the days before her death.
