July 13 Declared As ‘Sandra Bland Day’ In City of Austin

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The city of Austin has declared July 13 as Sandra Bland Day.

Sandra Bland Day

Austin Mayor Steve Adler made the proclamation.

Four years ago today, Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop.

In July 2015, Texas trooper Brian Encinia stopped Bland in Waller County for not using her turn signal when changing lanes while she was driving. The interaction escalated quickly, with Encinia pulling Bland out of the car and arresting her for allegedly assaulting a public servant.

The 28-year-old black woman from Illinois was found dead in her Waller County jail cell three days later.

Her death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

Encinia was fired from his job as a trooper and charged with perjury for lying in the report he filed after Bland’s arrest. Those charges were later dropped.

Bland’s death prompted the Sandra Bland Act in 2017 to help determine how many people are routinely arrested for infractions that don’t call for jail time.

Read the proclamation:

Be it known that
Whereas,
Sandra Annette Bland died on July 13th, 2015 at the age of 28, while in police custody in Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas; and
Whereas,
Sandra Bland’s wrongful death was affirmed as such by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in 2016; and
Whereas,
The Texas legislature passed the “Sandra Bland Act” in 2017 that requires county jails to divert people with mental health and substance abuse issues toward treatment and requires that independent law enforcement agencies investigate jail deaths; and
Whereas,
Sandra Bland was an activist for racial justice, whose wrongful death was a call to action across the United States to change the way the criminal justice system produces unequal outcomes;
Now, Therefore,
I, Steve Adler, Mayor of the City of Austin, Texas,
do hereby proclaim
July 13th, 2019
as
Sandra Bland Day
in Austin.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto
set my hand and caused the seal of the City
of Austin to be affixed this 13th Day of
July in the Year Two Thousand Nineteen