Bernie Sanders

eridani

(51,907 posts) Wed Dec 23, 2015, 06:29 AM Dec 2015

Sanders: Sandra Bland Would Be Alive 'if She Were a White Woman'

I think that since he talked to her mother, he is never going to let this one go. Thank heavens.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/263976-sanders-sandra-bland-would-be-alive-if-she-were-a-white

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said late Monday that Sandra Bland would not have died while in police custody in Texas if she were a white woman.

“Sandra Bland should not have died while in police custody,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a statement posted on Twitter.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that she, like too many African Americans who die in police custody, would be alive today if she were a white woman,” he continued.

“My thoughts are with her family and loved ones tonight. We need to reform a very broken criminal justice system.”

Sanders’s remarks follow a grand jury's decision Monday night to refuse returning indictments relating to Bland’s death earlier this year.

4 replies

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Highlight:

Sanders: Sandra Bland Would Be Alive 'if She Were a White Woman' (Original Post) eridani Dec 2015 OP

The Real Reason Sandra Bland Got Locked Up eridani Dec 2015 #1

Completely corrupt system. senz Dec 2015 #4

Tell it, Bernie. roody Dec 2015 #2

Bernie's the only candidate to take up the BLM cause. senz Dec 2015 #3

eridani

(51,907 posts)

1. The Real Reason Sandra Bland Got Locked Up

Reply to eridani (Original post)

Wed Dec 23, 2015, 06:44 AM

Dec 2015

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-real-reason-sandra-bland-got-locked-up/

But if you follow the money in Texas, it’s clear that one big reason people like Bland get stopped on the roads is because the state—and its counties and munipalities—are grubbing for dollars and cents.

Bland was detained ostensibly because she failed to make a lane change in Prairie View, a small, college town in rural Waller County, near Houston. It’s very common for young people to get pulled over there. As in Ferguson, Missouri, stopping drivers and ticketing them is how Waller County makes a lot of money.

Attorney Emily Gerrick has studied the phenomenon. She is with the Austin-based Texas Fair Defense Project. It’s a nonprofit working to improve the state’s public-defender system and challenge policies that jail poor people because they can’t afford bail-bond fees and post-conviction fines and costs.

Those costs are legion and staggering. Texas has no state income tax, and money for social services must come from somewhere. Gouging people with traffic tickets and criminal convictions is an easy way for the state, counties, and municipalities to collect lots of money.

They do it through a byzantine schedule of fees. The state keeps most of the money, but counties and cities retain a percentage. There’s a $25 “records-management” fee, for instance. A $15 “judicial fund” fee. Fifteen dollars added to each bail-bond payment. The list goes on, with scores of charges. As a former Waller County Justice of the Peace described it, a trivial infraction can rack up charges totaling as much as $500.