Sheriff involved in Sandra Bland case was previously fired over racism allegations

Sandra Bland, 28, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer following a routine traffic stop, was found dead in her cell at a Waller County, Texas, jail on Wednesday morning from an apparent suicide. Video footage of the stop showed Bland saying, "You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can't even hear!" ABC reported later that Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith claimed Bland "had been combative on the side of the road."

While the official word is that Bland killed herself in jail, her friends and family remain suspicious. Bland had recently gotten a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University; she was also a vocal activist in the "Black Lives Matter" movement in the wake of high-profile deaths of unarmed black men and women at the hands of white police officers.

Now, reports dug up by the liberal activist-journalist Shaun King of The Daily Kos appear to show that County Sheriff Glenn Smith — "who made the first public comments about Bland's in-custody death" — had been fired from a past job for his actions involving alleged "humiliation and mistreatment of young African American males."

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Another inmate was found hanging in the same jail as Bland's in 2012, Think Progress reports. Like Bland, this inmate had been charged with assaulting an officer.