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Texas House Committee Lays Groundwork For Sandra Bland Act

The attorney for Bland’s family says the proposed measures “would change the culture of policing,” reports the Texas Tribune.

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The Texas House County Affairs Committee has reportedly laid the groundwork for a new piece of legislation that would be known as the Sandra Bland Act. The committee’s proposed recommendations for lawmakers aims to improve de-escalation practices amongst law enforcement officials, provide more jail-to-treatment programs, and eradicate consent searches during traffic stops, reports the Texas Tribune.

From the Texas Tribune:

Fourteen recommendations in the Texas House County Affairs Committee’s recent report to lawmakers – including calls for them to increase police officer training for de-escalation and mental health awareness, to back jail-to-treatment diversion programs, and eliminate consent searches during stops – will be the foundation for the Sandra Bland Act.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, announced last year that he would file the bill to address race, poverty, mental health and accountability in law enforcement and corrections.

Rep. Coleman says that Sandra Bland’s traffic stop should have never resulted in an arrest. “If you look at Sandra Bland, the incident that led to her death – that’s all you have to look at,” he told the Texas Tribune. “[Encinia] was well within his right to (arrest Bland), and that’s where we’re running into the problem. It’s baked in the cake. Injustice is baked into the cake.”

According to the outlet, the proposed recommendations calls for the DPS to note the race of individuals that are pulled over, require that jails have electronic monitoring systems that would keep track of when the staff checks on inmates, and ensure that upon being released from jail individuals who were apprehended receive the proper healthcare.

Cannon Lambert, who serves as the attorney for Sandra Bland’s family, says the measures “would change the culture of policing,” reports the source.

Bland was apprehended and jailed following a traffic stop for a minor violation on July 10, 2015. Three days after her arrest, her body was discovered hanging in her jail cell in Waller County, Texas. She was 28.

SOURCE: Raw Story, Texas Tribune

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UPDATED: 2:30 p.m. ET, Sept. 2, 2021 -- The centuries-old American tradition of police shooting and killing Black males suffered an untraditional jolt in April when former cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty and convicted on all counts for murdering George Floyd by kneeling on the unarmed, handcuffed man's neck for more than nine minutes. MORE: #SayHerName: Black Women And Girls Killed By Police But it has been a quick resumption to police normalcy with multiple killings of Black people by law enforcement since the day of Chauvin's verdict in April. That has been especially true in Washington, D.C., where police shot three people in one week, killing two of them, including George D. Watson during a fatal encounter on Tuesday night. According to the police narrative, officers responded after someone called 911 to report a man brandishing a gun on an apartment balcony. The Washington Post reported that a cop fired at Watson when he aimed the gun at police. The 34-year-old died on the scene. Officers ultimately determined that Watson was armed with a pellet gun typically used with paintballs that does not pose any lethal threat. Watson's names join a long list of other Black men and boys killed by the police, including people who have become household names for all the wrong reasons like Tamir Rice, Botham Jean, E.J. Bradford and Michael Brown. But there are plenty of others whose police killings never went "viral," including people like Michael Dean, a 28-year-old father who police shot in the head on Dec. 3, 2019, and Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old HBCU student who police shot to death after a questionable traffic stop on Dec. 14, 2019. One of the most distressing parts of this seemingly nonstop string of police killings of Black people is the fact that more times than not, the officer involved in the shooting can hide behind the claim that they feared for their lives -- even if the victim was shot in the back, as has become the case for so many deadly episodes involving law enforcement. In a handful of those cases -- such as Antwon Rose, a 13-year-old boy killed in Pittsburgh, and Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old killed in Sacramento, both of whom were unarmed -- the officers either avoided being criminally charged altogether or were acquitted despite damning evidence that the cops' lives were not threatened and there was no cause for them to resort to lethal force or any violence for that matter. Crump, who has been retained in so many of these cases, described the above scenarios in his book, "Open Season," as the "genocide" of Black people. As NewsOne continues covering these shootings that so often go ignored by mainstream media, the below running list (in no certain order) of Black men and boys who have been shot and killed by police under suspicious circumstances can serve as a tragic reminder of the dangers Black and brown citizens face upon being born into a world of hate that has branded them as suspects since birth. Scroll down to learn more about the Black men and boys who have lost their lives to police violence.

Texas House Committee Lays Groundwork For Sandra Bland Act  was originally published on newsone.com

jail , Police Brutality , Sandra Bland , Sandra Bland Act , texas , Texas House County Affairs Committee , waller county

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