A Texas cop has stepped forward about the Sandra Bland investigation and lobbed serious accusations at the Waller County District Attorney’s office for excluding his testimony from the grand jury hearing in the criminal case against Texas DPS Officer Brian Encinia, who beat up Sandra Bland, ultimately leading to her untimely death in jail three days later.
Last July, Prairie View Police Officer Michael Kelley discovered that Encinia was asking for help deciding what crime to charge Sandra Bland with, after having beaten her savagely on a roadside without any actual suspicion of a crime, according to Dewayne Charleston, an activist who recorded a telephone conversation with the cop.
Encinia was sure to turn off his microphone before speaking to his supervisor to keep anybody else from overhearing the conversation, said Charleston.
The district attorney in Waller County has only obtained one misdemeanor indictment in the death of an otherwise healthy 28-year-old woman killed by a Texas jail last summer.
But Bland was arrested and charged with assaulting the officer, which was seen in two videos that went viral last summer, one from a witness and the other from the Texas Trooper’s official dash cam. (both shown below)
Less than a few days later, Bland was gone, a victim of callous jailers.
Just last week news broke that one Waller County Jailer failed his duty to perform his suicide watch over Sandra Bland, and falsified jail logs about it.
Charleston told the Houston Chronicle article that not only was his testimony intentionally kept from the grand jury, but also that he was threatened with retaliation if he blew the whistle publicly.
However, Charleston elected to lawfully record the conversation and released those recordings today.
Charleston said Tuesday outside the federal courthouse in Houston that Prairie View Police Officer Michael Kelley told him in a recorded conversation that heard he Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Brian Encinia say after he already detained Bland that he still hadn’t decided what charge he would book her on.
“He says Brian Encinia made sure he was not in ear shot of the car. He turned off his own microphone so no one would hear. And then he called his supervisor. He said, ‘I have no idea what I’m going to arrest her for, but we’ll figure it out when we get to the county jail,’” Charleston said Monday.
Kelley says on the recording he tried to share what he’d heard with an official at the district attorney’s office. “I wanted to testify on Sandra Bland’s behalf and they told me if I said anything they’re going to come after me,” he said in the recording.
Texas state trooper Encinia was indicted for perjury and fired earlier this year, officially for lying about what happened in recorded dash cam footage which PINAC News broke exclusively last July when we discovered video irregularities in the initially released video too.
Now it appears that Encinia intentionally went out of recording range too, all of which provoked Officer Charleston to write a long statement on Facebook in divisive prose.
But his statement uses the inside knowledge of a law enforcement officer to point out the shameful state of justice in southeast Texas, in that the State didn’t charge Encinia with any crimes against Sandra Bland, but rather for lying to the state:
So let me get this straight; there “is” a misdemeanor charge for a licensed police officer who lies about an arrest on an official government document, which is passed off to a warrant signing judge, and used by a magistrate, who then sets a $5000 bond for a defendant who was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change, and who is subsequently ordered out of her own car for failing to extinguish her cigarette. Oh, I get it. It’s called, “telling a little white lie”.
Come to think of it, what would it take for a “little white lie” to become a felony? Or put another way….nevermind! Would it have had to be told UNDER OATH, directly to the faces of the grand jurors and the District Attorney during the grand jury proceedings? No way!
Well, experience “has” taught me one thing – I am smart enough to know that if ever a White police officer “could” be charged with Misdemeanor Perjury in connection with the suspicious death of a Black motorist, it would happen, first, in Waller County, Texas. Now I must honestly commend Elton Mathis, Waller County’s District Attorney, for securing the indictment. He could have just swept the whole issue under the rug. But then again, If I were him, and was friends with Waller County Sheriff, Glenn Smith, I wouldn’t dare take the chance of raising that rug up…no telling what’a come out from under there.But now since a White public official has now, for the first time in my memory, been charged with a crime against a Black person in Waller County…. Say what?…just a second…excuse me, one minute…be right back…
My bad, Encinia wasn’t even charged with a crime against the African-American, Sandra Bland. He was charged with a crime against the state. Perjury against the state. Telling a “little white lie”!
Officer Charleston crossed the thin blue line, and has paid the price for speaking out, saying at the end of his statement that he’d been arrested for airing his grievances against law enforcement.
“Hell, I was arrested back in August for “peacefully” protesting against law enforcement’s treatment of Bland, and I’ll probably serve more time than this “trusted” state trooper. Misdemeanor Perjury!…are you kidding me?”
Waller County jailers and their elected Sheriff Glen Smith (who wrongly insisted that the traffic stop of Sandra Bland was legal) have all been cleared by the investigation into Bland’s death in jail.
“Encinia may be fired, but Sandra Bland is gone,” concluded Charleston, “and so what Else is “not” new? You’ll get that when you get home!”
