AUSTIN — While a proposal to prevent incidents such as the 2015 arrest that ended with Sandra Bland’s jail-house death is winning support, opponents say it would strip peace officers of vital tools. 

“We’ll be actively opposing the bill,” said Kevin Lawrence, executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association. “It would hinder our ability to protect the public.”

Authored by state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, the Sandra Bland Act would address racial profiling and provide jail-diversion programs for those with mental health and substance-abuse problems.

“The events leading up to Sandra Bland’s unnecessary jailing and tragic death sparked statewide and national outrage,” Coleman said in a statement. “The Sandra Bland Act aims to improve and correct Texas’ criminal justice system to make it better for all people and prevent future tragedies like Sandra Bland’s.”

Her death, ruled a suicide, came after she was left alone in the Waller County Jail.

Coleman’s House Bill 2702 would address issues, including:

• Racial disparities in how the Texas Department of Public Safety treats blacks when compared to whites after they have been stopped for traffic violations.

• Strengthening Texas’ racial profiling law and ensuring that data collection is robust, clear and accurate.

• Ending pretext stops, consent searches and raising the burden of proof needed to both stop and search vehicles in Texas.

A later-fired Department of Public Safety officer arrested Bland for a misdemeanor, fine-only violation.  

Coleman said that sending someone to jail for an offense that carries no penalty of jail time is not logical and potentially unconstitutional.

Charley Wilkison, executive director of Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, wants to keep the fine-only Class C arrest.

But Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas School of Law and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said such procedures punish people in advance, “more than if they were convicted of the offense.”

Ending the misdemeanor arrest, or expanding personal recognizance bail, are only just a part of the omnibus bill, which Deitch said addresses real issues. 

“There were various points [and] any one of them could have gone a very different way,” Deitch said. “What the Sandra Bland Act does is stop and examine each stage of the process and say what could be done differently.” 

Coleman would also mandate changes to how law enforcement handles people in custody who have mental-health challenges. 

Greg Hansch, public policy director for the National Alliance on Mental Health Texas, said diversion programs such as those contemplated in Coleman’s House Bill 2702 “would make a tremendous positive” difference if adopted. 

“It’s 11 times more costly to treat people in the criminal justice system than in the community,” Hansch said. “It’s better for the individual and it’s better for the public.”

Deitch said jail is “absolutely the wrong place” for people with substance-abuse and mental-health problems.

And on that point, Wilkison, who said much of Coleman’s bill is “a solution to a nonexistent problem,” agreed. 

“The sleeper story is that Sandra Bland went into a world where those people didn’t have mental-health training,” Wilkison said. “I support the idea that we can do better on mental health.”

County jails are the No. 1 providers of mental-health care in Texas.

Jackson County Sheriff A.J. “Andy” Louderback said Texas is using its jails inappropriately. 

“There’s 191 rural counties in Texas,” said Louderback, who is legislative affairs director for the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas. “We don’t have mental-health professionals in those jails.”

Rectifying that part of Texas criminal justice, Louderback said, could create “some tensions when it comes to cost.”

Still, Louderback said, “you’re going to pay early or you’re going to pay later.”

Wilkison said he expects to see “mega-bits” of the Bland bill appear in amendments to other proposals. 

“The good parts, we’ll look at and support,” Wilkison said. 

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.