A WOMAN WHO died in police custody in Texas told the sheriff’s department of a previous suicide attempt, Waller County Sheriff Glen Smith has claimed.
Sanrda Bland was found dead in her cell three days after being arrested. The coroner ruled her death as suicide but the woman’s family have rejected this, saying she would never take her own life.
Yesterday Sheriff Smith told Associated Press that Bland had said she tried to end her life in the past after a failed pregnancy. She apparently made the comments after being asked a series of standard questions put to people detained at the jail.
But the booking papers released yesterday also indicate Bland did not have suicidal thoughts at the time of her arrest and that neither the arresting officer nor anyone else at the jail believed she was at risk.
The family’s lawyer disputed claims that Bland had a history of depression.
“Everybody has hills and valleys,” Cannon Lambert said, but “she was never clinically diagnosed” and was not taking prescription medication.
“Sandy was a social activist. Social activists don’t take their own life, particularly in jail. It just doesn’t make sense,” Lambert said.
The trooper has been placed on administrative leave and an initial investigation found he violated the department’s “courtesy policy” and procedures regarding traffic stops.
The sheriff’s department released a video Monday which it says shows nobody entered or exited Bland’s cell before her body was discovered.
Footage was also released of the woman’s arrest yesterday. It shows the offer ordering Bland from her car after she refuses to put out her cigarette.
He then draws what appears to be a taser gun and tells her: “I will light you up”.
Answers
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has offered his condolences to Bland’s family “for their tragic loss.”
“The family deserves answers,” he said in a statement.
“The Texas Rangers, working in coordination with the FBI, will conduct a full and thorough investigation that will deliver those answers and work toward the ultimate goal of ensuring justice in this case.”
Bland was an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests sparked by the 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.
Her funeral will be held Saturday in suburban Chicago.
- © AFP 2015 With reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
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