Sandra Bland is shown in a photo posted on her Facebook page on May 21, 2015.
A charge has been dropped against the only official to face criminal indictment related to the arrest of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was found hanged in her Texas jail cell three days after her arrest and whose name became a rallying cry in protests against racial bias in policing.
Former State Trooper Brian Encinia, who pulled Bland over on July 10, 2015, in Prairie View, Texas, for failing to use a turn signal, no longer faces a perjury charge for making a false statement about the arrest, according to papers filed Wednesday at the Waller County Courthouse in Hempstead, northwest of Houston.
The dismissal of the charge comes more than a year after a grand jury said Encinia lied when he wrote in an affidavit justifying the arrest that he removed Bland from her car to conduct a safer traffic investigation.
Family members and civil rights officials had protested that assertion, pointing to a viral dash cam video of an escalating confrontation with Bland where the officer said he would “yank” her out of the vehicle, threatened to use a stun gun and said he would “light you up” as she refused to put out a cigarette and step out.
Read the full story on LATimes.com.
from KTLA http://ift.tt/2t1TRaR
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