{"id":10391,"date":"2015-08-01T02:53:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T02:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10391"},"modified":"2015-08-01T02:53:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T02:53:31","slug":"lawmakers-right-to-grill-dps-head-over-bland-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10391","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers right to grill DPS head over Bland arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Texas legislators are putting the head of the state’s police agency on the hot seat.<\/p>\n

He needs to stay there until he can offer some remedy for an incident that resulted in the tragic death of a young woman who was arrested for a traffic violation.<\/p>\n

Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw came under fire this week in a Texas House committee hearing over the arrest of Sandra Bland by a DPS trooper; Bland later died in a Waller County jail after apparently hanging herself in her cell.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/07\/30\/lawmakers-review-county-jail-procedures-following-\/<\/p>\n

“I know the death happened in the jail, but the catalyst for the death clearly happened at the traffic stop,” state Rep. Jonathan Strickland, R-Bedford said.<\/p>\n

The catalyst was a confrontation between Bland and Trooper Brian Encinia, who pulled Bland over after she failed to signal before making a turn in her vehicle. He asked her to extinguish her cigarette.Then matters got ugly.<\/p>\n

Bland sassed the officer, who then became agitated. Bland then became angry. Encinia got even angrier. The trooper then pulled his Taser out and threatened to “light you up” with the device.<\/p>\n

Bland and Encinia exchanged more heated insults. She exited the vehicle and was taken to jail.<\/p>\n

And for what? Because she didn’t use her turn signal.<\/p>\n

Strickland also wondered aloud why the trooper is still on the job, to which McCraw answered that the agency has a process that he intends to follow before deciding how to handle Encinia’s future with DPS.<\/p>\n

The incident, which has drawn international attention, needs a thorough examination. McCraw has promised to provide one.<\/p>\n

One avenue that needs exploring is how a trooper — who is supposedly trained\u00a0to de-escalate<\/em> tension with the public — actually took it in the opposite — and tragically wrong direction.<\/p>\n\n

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Texas legislators are putting the head of the state’s police agency on the hot seat. He needs to stay there until he can offer some remedy for an incident that resulted in the tragic death of a young woman who was arrested for a traffic violation. Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw came under … Continue reading Lawmakers right to grill DPS head over Bland arrest<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[744,1447,4109,4422,4511,4642,4652],"class_list":["post-10391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-brian-encinia","tag-dps","tag-sandra-bland","tag-steve-mccraw","tag-taser","tag-texas-house-of-representatives","tag-texas-legislators"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}