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On July 13, 2015, 28-year-old Sandra Bland was found dead in a Texas jail cell three days after being arrested during a traffic stop.
But police officer Michael Kelley later confessed that portions of his original incident report were removed – likely because they made the officer who arrested her, Brian Encinia, look bad!
Kelley says that when he arrived at the scene, Bland was already handcuffed in the back of a squad car, even though Encinia admitted he was still plotting what to charge her with.
And in 2019, Bland’s own cell phone footage showed Encinia clearly wasn’t fearing for his life!
Officer Kelley also observed that it looked like Bland had been struck in the head. “She had a large mark on her head,” he noted. “Maybe she got kicked.” But it gets even more terrifying.
A former jailer testified that he FORGED jail logs on the day Bland died. And Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam abused his power to threaten Kelley into not telling Bland’s mother’s attorney the truth. “He told me I was going to be beneath the jail,” Kelley said.
How many others have died because they were outspoken and Black? Whether it was “suicide” or not, the state is responsible for Sandra Bland’s death. We don’t have to be “guilty” to be murdered – our Blackness is enough.