HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says Sandra Bland would not have died in police custody if she had been a White.
The Vermont senator issued a brief statement Monday night after a Texas grand jury declined to indict any of the sheriff’s officials or jailers for their treatment of Bland. The 28-year-old Chicago-area woman died in her Waller County jail cell in what the medical examiner determined was a suicide.
Sanders, who was campaigning in Iowa, says the U.S. must reform “a very broken criminal justice system.”
The grand jury will reconvene in January to determine whether charges should be brought against the state trooper who stopped Bland on July 10 for a minor traffic infraction. The stop escalated into a confrontation that ended with Bland being forced to the ground and arrested for assaulting a public servant.
Bland’s family challenges the suicide ruling.
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