AUSTIN, Texas, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The family of a black motorist found hanged in her Texas jail cell after being held in police custody following a traffic stop has reached a $1.9 million settlement in a wrongful death suit against law enforcement, their lawyer said on Thursday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Waller County Jail, run by the local sheriff, will pay the family of Sandra Bland, Chicago-based lawyer Cannon Lambert said in an interview.

The county jail will also step up staff training and inmate monitoring, and have a nurse or emergency medical technician available for all shifts as part of the settlement, he said.

"This is the beginning, not the end," said Lambert, who added that Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, had insisted that jail reform be included in the settlement.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said it had not settled litigation regarding Bland and was not a party to any agreements between the plaintiffs and Waller County defendants.

Lambert said that in the settlement, the Department of Public Safety, whose liability is capped by state statutes, will pay $100,000 and the jail will pay $1.8 million.

Bland, 28, was found dead in her cell three days after her July 2015 arrest, with a trash bag around her neck. Critics said race was a factor in her being pulled over while driving, and for her arrest, which they said was sparked by the trooper escalating tensions.

The Waller County Sheriff's office said an agreement had been reached but was not yet final. It said the deal's details were still confidential.

"The Waller County defendants also emphasize they vigorously deny any fault or wrongdoing, and the potential settlement does not involve any such admissions," it said in a statement.

Bland was pulled over in her car on July 10 by then-state trooper Brian Encinia for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. She was charged with assaulting an officer.

The Department of Public Safety faulted Encinia for his conduct during the stop and later fired him. A dashcam video showed him shouting at Bland and failing to answer her when she asked repeatedly why she was being arrested.

Shortly after the incident, Bland's family filed the wrongful death suit against Encinia, the Waller County sheriff's office and her jailers. They also questioned an autopsy report that described her death as a suicide by hanging.

Encinia has been indicted on a misdemeanor charge of lying in the arrest report he had written of the incident. (Editing by Bernadette Baum) </s> AUSTIN, Texas -- The family of a black motorist found hanged in her Texas jail cell after being held in police custody following a traffic stop has reached a $1.9 million settlement in a wrongful death suit against law enforcement, their lawyer said on Thursday.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Waller County Jail, run by the local sheriff, will pay the family of Sandra Bland, Chicago-based lawyer Cannon Lambert said in an interview.

The county jail will also step up staff training and inmate monitoring, and have a nurse or emergency medical technician available for all shifts as part of the settlement, he said.

"This is the beginning, not the end," he said, adding that Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, insisted on jail reform in the settlement.

Bland, 28, was found dead in her cell three days after her July 2015 arrest, with a trash bag around her neck. Critics said race was a factor in her being pulled over while driving, and for her arrest, which they said was sparked by the trooper escalating tensions.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Waller County Sheriff's office were not immediately available for comment. The county has denied any mistreatment of Bland.

In the settlement, the Department of Public Safety, whose liability is capped by state statutes, will pay $100,000 and the jail will pay $1.8 million.

Bland was pulled over in her car on July 10 by then-state trooper Brian Encinia for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. She was charged with assaulting an officer.

The Department of Public Safety faulted Encinia for his conduct during the stop and subsequently fired him. A dashcam video showed him shouting at Bland and failing to answer her when she asked repeatedly why she was being arrested.

Shortly after the incident, Bland's family filed a wrongful death suit against Encinia, the Waller County sheriff's office and her jailers, accusing them of being responsible for her hanging. They also questioned an autopsy report that described her death as a suicide by hanging.

Encinia has been indicted on a misdemeanor charge of lying in the arrest report he had written of the incident. He has pleaded not guilty.

The county jail has previously been cited by a state monitor for not doing enough to keep an eye on inmates. </s> HOUSTON -- The family of Sandra Bland has reached a settlement in its federal wrongful death lawsuit against Texas authorities, the family’s attorney told CBS News on Thursday morning.

Attorney Cannon Lambert said combined settlements with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Waller County jail will pay the family $1.9 million.

But local officials said the agreement hasn’t been finalized and was supposed to remain confidential until a final settlement was reached.

Bland, a Prairie View A&M University graduate, died in the jail in 2015, CBS DFW reports.

The 28-year-old woman had been pulled over by Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia. The traffic stop became heated when Bland refused the officer’s request to put out a cigarette and his subsequent order to get out of the car.

Encinia threatened to shoot Bland with a stun gun unless she obeyed his order and said she kicked him during the tussle.

Bland was later taken to the jail in Hempstead, where she was later found hanging from a cell partition.

As part of the settlement, the jail will have an on-duty nurse and emergency medical technician for all shifts going forward, Lambert told CBS News.

Also, the Walter County judge will seek passage of state legislation that will fund improvements in intakes, bookings, screenings and jail support, Lambert said. Any legislation that may pass will be named in Bland’s honor. </s> The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Waller County Jail, run by the local sheriff, will pay the money to the family of Sandra Bland, Houston TV station KTRK station reported.

Bland, 28 and an African-American, was found dead in her cell three days after her July 2015 arrest, with a trash bag around her neck. Critics said race was a factor in her being pulled over while driving, and for her arrest, which they said was sparked by the trooper escalating tensions.

Lawyers for Bland and officials from the sheriff's office, as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety, were not immediately available for comment. The sheriff in Waller County, outside of Houston, has denied any mistreatment of Bland.

Bland, 28, was pulled over in her car on July 10 by then- state trooper Brian Encinia for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. She was charged with assaulting an officer.

The Texas Department of Public Safety faulted Encinia for his conduct during the stop and subsequently fired him. A dashcam video showed him shouting at Bland and failing to answer her when she asked numerous times why she was being arrested.

Shortly after the incident, Bland's family filed a wrongful death suit against Encinia, the Waller County sheriff's office and her jailers, accusing them of being responsible for her hanging.

In the settlement, the Department of Public Safety, whose liability is capped by state statutes, will pay $100,000 and the jail will pay $1.8 million, KTRK station reported, citing attorneys for Bland.

Encinia has been indicted on a misdemeanor charge of lying in the arrest report he had written of the incident.

The Waller County jail, where Bland was held, had been cited by a state monitor for not doing enough to keep an eye on inmates and properly filling out intake forms, Brandon Wood, the executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, told a Texas House of Representatives committee in July 2015. </s> A lawyer for the family of Sandra Bland, a black Chicago-area woman who died in a Texas jail after a contentious traffic stop last summer, says a $1.9-million settlement has been reached in the family's wrongful death lawsuit.

Attorney Cannon Lambert said the settlement includes a provision that the Waller County Jail have a 24-hour nurse or emergency medical technician on duty, told KTRK-TV of Houston reported Thursday.

Authorities have said Bland killed herself in the jail three days after she was arrested by a state trooper for a minor traffic offense. Bland's family later sued the county and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

County officials, the sheriff's office and their lawyer didn't immediately return messages Thursday from the Associated Press. Bland's sister also didn't immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

Kindergarten student brings 30 packs of heroin to school in his lunchbox </s> Key events in case of black woman found dead in Texas jail

HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) — The family of Sandra Bland, a Chicago-area black woman who died in a Texas jail cell after a contentious traffic stop last summer, has settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $1.9 million, according to the family's attorney. Bland's arrest and death, which was ruled a suicide, came amid heightened national scrutiny of police and their dealings with black suspects, especially individuals who were killed by officers or who died in police custody.

Here are some key events in the Bland case:

— July 10, 2015: Bland is pulled over in Prairie View, northwest of Houston, for changing lanes without signaling. The stop grows confrontational and state trooper Brian Encinia orders her from the car before forcing her to the ground and taking her into custody on a charge of assaulting a public servant. Bland, who was in the process of moving to Texas from the Chicago area, is booked into the Waller County jail.

— July 13, 2015: A jailer finds Bland hanging in her cell. A preliminary autopsy determined she used a garbage bag to hang herself.

— July 16, 2015: The Texas Department of Public Safety announces Encinia has been placed on administrative leave. Authorities determine he violated procedures guiding traffic stops and the department's courtesy policy.

— July 21, 2015: DPS releases dash-cam video showing the traffic stop, which quickly became confrontational. The video shows the trooper holding a stun gun and yelling, "I will light you up!" after Bland refuses to get out of her car. Bland eventually steps out of the vehicle, and Encinia orders her to the side of the road. The confrontation continues off-camera but is still audible.

— July 22, 2015: Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith reveals that Bland told a guard during the booking process that she had previously tried to kill herself. Smith said two jailers who spoke with Bland insisted that she appeared fine when booked into the jail. She was not placed under suicide watch.

— July 23, 2015: The Waller County district attorney's office reveals details of autopsy findings, which concluded Bland killed herself. The findings also show she had marijuana in her system and that about 30 cuts along Bland's wrist were likely self-inflicted some weeks before her arrest.

— July 31, 2015: Department of Public Safety personnel records show Encinia was once cautioned about "unprofessional conduct" in a 2014 incident while he was still a probationary trooper.

— Dec. 21, 2015: Waller County grand jury decides no felony crime was committed by the sheriff's office or jailers in the treatment of Bland.

— Jan. 6: Waller County grand jury indicts Encinia on perjury count, a misdemeanor, for allegedly lying about how he removed Bland from her vehicle during the stop. The Department of Public Safety says it is firing Encinia.

— March 2: State officials say Encinia has been formally fired. He has the ability to appeal.

— March 22: Encina pleads not guilty to the misdemeanor perjury charge.

— April 12: Panel convened after Bland's death issues report saying the small-town jail where Bland died needs more expertise among its staff to identify mental health issues, along with body cameras and anger-management training for jailers.

— July 22: A Bland family attorney says an ex-guard told him in a deposition that he falsified jail log entries by noting he'd checked on Bland in the hour before she was found dead in her cell.

— Aug. 26: Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that two of Bland's jailers were quietly moved to other jobs two months after her death.

— Sept. 15: An attorney for Bland's family tells Houston television station KTRK that the wrongful death lawsuit has been settled for $1.9 million. </s> The night before Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide, guards failed to monitor the disgraced financier as closely as required at the Manhattan jail where he was being held, the New York Times and Reuters are reporting. While the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein was detained pending trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, requires corrections officers to check on inmates every 30 minutes—and every 15 minutes for inmates on suicide watch—a source “not authorized to speak on the record” told Reuters those procedures were not followed overnight before Epstein was found hanging in his cell.

Citing an anonymous law enforcement official, the Times reported Sunday that Epstein was also allowed to be housed alone two weeks after being taken off of suicide watch, in violation of jail policy.

While the claims about the jail’s failure to keep watch over perhaps the most notorious prisoner in America have not been verified, they point to a grim commonplace of our carceral system: Time and time again, stories about incarcerated people in prisons, jails, or immigration detention centers reveal dangerous lapses in monitoring, even for inmates considered at risk of suicide.

In 2017, a guard at the private Stewart Detention Center in rural Georgia failed to check on detainee Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez-Joseph every 30 minutes as required under Immigration and Customs Enforcement standards, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Jimenez, 27, was being held in solitary confinement at the for-profit detention center, run by private prison operator CoreCivic. He had previously been deemed a “suicide risk” but was not on suicide watch when he hanged himself using a bedsheet. A state investigation found that an officer falsified documents to log visits to Jimenez‘s cell that never happened. (The officer was later fired.)

In 2015, Sandra Bland, who was jailed following a traffic stop in Texas, was found hanging by a plastic trash bag inside her cell after being left alone by Waller County jail staff for nearly two hours. According to The Guardian, Bland had notified officers during the booking process that she had previously tried to kill herself. A report from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards three days after Bland’s death noted that “visual, face-to-face observation of all inmates by jailers no less than once every 60 minutes” was required under the state’s minimum standards, but that guards at the county jail did not complete the required checks.

Damien Coestly had a similar experience before he killed himself in June 2015. Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer met Coestly while working as a guard at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, which was also run by CoreCivic—then known as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). When Bauer met him, Coestly had been on suicide watch, but he was later downgraded to segregation, meaning that guards were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes, just like Epstein. Even then, he was not monitored as often as required, Bauer reported:

Coestly was put in a cell with an elderly man who was severely mentally ill, [the prison’s assistant chief of security] Miss Lawson told me. Unlike inmates on suicide watch, prisoners in segregation, or seg, were not supposed to be under constant watch. Guards were supposed to check on them every 30 minutes. An inmate who had been a few doors down from Coestly in seg later told me that he saw Damien taken out of his cell to make a phone call. Afterward, the prisoner heard Coestly tell a SORT officer he was feeling suicidal. The officer said he would return to get Coestly, but never did. Coestly repeated several times that he was going to kill himself, the inmate recalled. Miss Lawson said that according to prison policy, that should have gotten him automatically placed on suicide watch. In their reports about the incident, Miss Lawson said, CCA’s SORT officers “covered up a lot of stuff they shouldn’t have.” She said video from the prison’s cameras showed that it had been an hour and a half since they had done a security check on Coestly’s tier. “If they had been going up and down the tiers like they were supposed to, then it wouldn’t have happened,” she believes. No Winn employees were ever disciplined as a result of the investigation, she said.

A CoreCivic spokesman later told Bauer he had his “facts wrong in this case” but declined to provide additional details.

Epstein may have been be vastly more famous than Bland, Jimenez, and Coestly, but the circumstances of his death, as reported by the Times and Reuters, seem to fit the same pattern: a known suicide risk, carelessness by guards, and a lapse in detention practices. It’s a different sort of conspiracy from some of the theories being bruited this weekend. In this case the body count is real.

If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a free 24/7 service that offers support, information, and local resources: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). </s> This post was originally published on this site

U.S. NEWS Texas man arrested after allegedly killing three young children, shooting woman in the head https://linewsradio.com/texas-man-arrested-after-allegedly-killing-three-young-children-shooting-woman-in-the-head/ http://abcnewsradioonline.com/national-news/

(TEXAS CITY, Texas) — Police arrested a Texas man who allegedly murdered three young children and shot a woman in the head Thursday.

Junaid Mehmood, 27, allegedly killed an infant and two children — believed to be 2 years old and 5 years old — at a Texas City apartment complex and left a woman there to die, according to police.

Police discovered the victims at the Pointe Ann Apartments in Texas City, Texas, about 40 miles southeast of Houston, while responding to a welfare concern at around 6:15 p.m., the Texas City Police Department said in a statement.

The children were pronounced dead on the scene and the woman was rushed to a nearby hospital, according to the statement. The department didn’t disclose the woman’s identity, or her relationship to the children, but said she was in stable condition.

The children’s causes of death has not been released.

Mehmood was apprehended in Houston after a brief manhunt late Thursday night.

Police records indicate that he’d been arrested multiple times, charged with fraud, robbery, assault and drug possession. He was charged with fraud in Galveston County in February 2010 and received five years probation. In 2014, he was charged with family assault and spent 20 days in confinement. After a robbery conviction in 2015 he was sentenced to three years in jail.

It’s unclear if Mehmood has obtained an attorney. </s> RICHMOND, Texas – A 47-year-old man has been charged with raping a 14-year-old Houston-area girl who investigators say told a doctor she was his wife and they were having sex.

Fort Bend County jail records Steven Carty was being held Thursday on a charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child, with bond at $100,000.

The girl’s 39-year-old mother, Cherry Payton, was charged with endangering a child by criminal negligence, with bond at $10,000.

Online records don’t list attorneys to speak for either adult.

A sheriff’s statement says Child Protective Services on June 5 reported a 14-year-old girl told a doctor that she was married, sexually active and wed at age 13.

Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a law that says the youngest age to legally marry is 16, but only if emancipated from parents.
Texas authorities agree to pay $1.9 million to the family of Sandra Bland, the woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, in July 2015. A grand jury did not issue an indictment.