The Real Reason Sandra Bland Got Locked Up

[eridani]

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.

[beam me up scottie]

1. Just like Ferguson, Mo.

The Texas Fair Defense Project calls the Consolidated Court Cost mostly unconstitutional because it pays for efforts having nothing to do with the violations committed by people who have to pay the fee. The organization is challenging the fee in court. Meanwhile, Gerrick says, there’s a huge incentive among law enforcers for hassling people like Sandra Bland. “Courts in Texas are huge revenue generators and court costs are definitely a motivation for pulling people over.”

[akbacchus_BC]

2. It is so hard at times to follow the police brutality in the US. Was Sandra Bland the woman who died

later in prison? The DA was not going to press charges! Hope this is the news I heard!

[TexasProgresive]

3. She was jailed for a minor traffic offense

She failed to give a turn signal. The cop ordered her to put out a cigarette and she refused, a fatal mistake.

She couldn't make bail and is alleged to have hung herself with a trash bag.

[ljm2002]

4. Making the police into a profit center...

...was always a bad idea.

[Scuba]

5. Turns the cop shop into a profit center while curtailing voting rights. Win-win for the right wing.

[lonestarnot]

6. Texas asshats.

[Lee-Lee]

7. As I have said before- end the practice of municipal courts where cities and counties

Can see any money from the system.

Here in NC that is how it's run- the courts are all run at the state level, any fines from tickets or arrests goes all into the state treasury.

It actually cost my department if I wrote a ticket, because then they had to pay me overtime to go to court. As a result only two deputies on our department focused on traffic enforcement, and the rest of us only wrote serious tickets like DUI and gave warnings for most everything else.

Every state should follow that pattern.

[lame54]

8. but why did the cop turn around in the first place?

[rgbecker]

9. Is it common to have to post bail for a traffic violation.

I've had a couple of tickets, but never had to post bail to keep out of jail. O, but I'm white.

[eridani]

10. Correct. It is pretty much unheard of if you are white. Except maybe if you're poor n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Technically, you have... when you signed the ticket

but since you are white your signature is enough.

Some places of the country are also worst than others in this respect and no, some of the worst places are not the ones people imagine. And some of those places are slowly trying to change it... I also call it the Ferguson effect.

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_28277488/california-changes-rules-traffic-ticket-fines