Sandra Bland family: Charge against Texas trooper just a ‘slap on the wrist’

Perjury charges levied against the Texas state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland during a confrontational traffic stop last summer are merely “a slap on the wrist,” Bland’s family said Thursday.

Bland’s mother and three of her sisters said Wednesday’s indictment of Brian Encinia for lying about the circumstances of the controversial arrest captured on dash-cam video makes little difference in their battle to uncover details about what happened.

The 28-year-old Bland was found dead three days later in her jail cell, and her relatives said that authorities continue to conceal information from them.

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“Where is the indictment for the assault, the battery, the false arrest?” Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, said in a news conference at her attorney’s office. “I can’t be expected to be excited about that because I felt there’s so much more that he should have been indicted on.”

“Justice looks like holding people accountable for what they do, not part of what they do,” attorney Cannon Lambert said.

Reed-Veal said she wanted to see officials follow through with their efforts to fire Encinia, but she was not confident in the trooper being convicted on the misdemeanor charge.

“I don’t trust the system,” she said.

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