1/ Five years ago today, #SandraBland was found dead in a rural Texas jail cell. Legislation sparked by the outrage over her death was mostly stripped of racial profiling and police reform measures before the #txlege passed it.
Here’s where things stand.
Here’s where things stand.
2/ Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was found dead in an apparent suicide at the Waller County Jail three days after she was arrested during a routine traffic stop.
3/ Dashboard camera footage disproved the state trooper’s stated reason for arresting her — assault on a public servant — and showed him threatening to drag her out of her car and use a Taser on her after she refused to put out a cigarette.
4/ Bland’s family and friends described her as “a woman who saw greatness in everyone and was determined to see them succeed whether they were an aspiring artist or a single mother.” bit.ly/3j0HR2U
5/ Her death and the released footage led to national outrage and demands for police and jail reforms.
Here’s what the resulting legislation initially proposed:
Here’s what the resulting legislation initially proposed:
6/ Expand what qualifies as racial and ethnic profiling, mandate people experiencing a mental health crisis and substance abuse be diverted to treatment over jail, and create more training and reporting requirements for county jails and law enforcement. bit.ly/2CtzRXi
7/ The original bill also would have limited arrests for offenses that at most would end in a fine with no jail time, and officers found to have repeatedly engaged in racial profiling would have been suspended "for not less than six months.”
8/ This version faced strong opposition from law enforcement groups and lawmakers concerned about unfunded mandates.
9/ In 2017, the version of the bill that passed both #txlege chambers included jail reforms like diverting inmates with mental health and substance abuse issues into treatment and mandating that independent law enforcement agencies investigate jail deaths.
10/ The Sandra Bland Act signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott had become mostly a mental health and jail reform bill.
It lost support from Bland’s family.
It lost support from Bland’s family.
11/ A second attempt to pass a bill to limit nonjailable offenses in 2019 was again killed after opposition by one of Texas’ largest police unions, confusion and procedural snafus in the House, and an apparent disinterest among Senate leadership: bit.ly/2OiTZhD
12/ After George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police and the uprising that followed, @GovAbbott lauded the state's 2017 Sandra Bland Act and raised the idea of the #txlege passing a “George Floyd Act” in 2021, but he didn't mention specific proposals.
13/ State Sen. John Whitmire and state Rep. Garnet Coleman, Democrats who led the original version of the Sandra Bland Act, said in June that they are determined to push the pieces of the legislation that failed through during next year’s #txlege session.
14/14 Those reforms include measures to increase the standards by which law enforcement officers can stop and search a vehicle and to ban officers from stopping drivers for minor traffic violations to allow them to look into other suspicions. bit.ly/2ASZUGS
