July 21,2015
WALLER COUNTY, TEXAS— The sheriff’s office in Waller County, Texas, has released three hours of video from a jail camera that shows the area outside the cell where a young African-American woman died this month.
Sandra Bland, 28, of Chicago was stopped for a minor traffic violation July 10 and was arrested for assaulting an officer. Three days later, she was found dead in her jail cell, and relatives, friends and civil rights activists continue to demand an outside investigation of what happened.
In the video from the jail, there is no direct view of Bland in her cell, but it does show the moment a guard discovers something is wrong. Later, paramedics arrive to remove the body.
Waller County Sheriff’s Department Captain Brian Cantrell said guards found her in a standing position with a cord fashioned from a plastic garbage bag around her neck.
“She passed through asphyxiation, so that tells you that she could not breathe, and that can happen whether standing, kneeling down or sitting down,” Cantrell said.
Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said final judgment on what happened to Bland would depend on evidence gathered by law enforcement authorities, including the FBI.
“It is very much too early to make any kind of determination that this was a suicide or a murder because the investigations are not complete,” Mathis said.
There are also questions about the arrest, captured by a passer-by via cellphone video. Mathis said the dashboard video being released by the state shows the arresting officer’s errors as well as what he described as a “combative” Bland.
“It was not a model traffic stop, and it was not a model person that was stopped,” he said.
Bland was an outspoken critic of police abuse of African-Americans, so many in Waller County think that might have been why she was stopped.
Black religious figures have called for a Justice Department investigation, saying Bland's civil rights were violated because of her race.
Among those holding a daily vigil outside the jail is the Reverend Hannah Bonner, who identifies with Bland as a fellow activist.
“There’s that sense of solidarity that you build within the movement and that sense that we have lost one of our own,” Bonner said.
Brandi, another vigil participant, also believes racism was behind the jail cell death. “It is a tragedy for this town, for this city, for our nation that these types of brutalities continue to happen,” she said.
Officials are calling for patience as they await the results of the investigation. Those results should be known by sometime next month.