The Texas House Committee on County Affairs met on July 30 to hear testimony on Sandra Bland and jail standards.
Bland, 28, was pulled over by a state trooper in Hempstead on July 10. Soon after, she was placed in the Waller County Jail and was found dead in her cell on July 13. Investigators ruled the death a suicide. The story, covered by local, state, national and world news agencies, has emerged in the context of other tragic outcomes involving black citizens and law enforcement.
“How does someone get pulled over for not signaling and end up dead three days later? It just does not compute,” said Committee Chair Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, in opening the hearing. Coleman called for discussion on how such an event might affect the Texas Department of Public Safety’s training of officers and how Texas county jails might adjust their practices in the incarceration of mentally ill inmates.
