Sandra Bland knew her rights. This officer was way out of line.
In the short clip, you can hear the state trooper furiously yelling “Get out of the car! Now!”. Bland asks him why he opened her car door and what his reason is for apprehending her. She asks why he’s doing this for a failure to signal, especially at her own school.
Then he pointed at her chest and said “I will light you up!”
The officer then shouts at her to stop recording, to which Sandra says she knows her rights and will take this to court. She insists that she can record, and that the cell phone is her property. The officer shouts at her again to put the phone down. The clip ends there.
Three days later, the woman wielding the cellphone — a 28-year-old recent transplant named Sandra Bland who had been pulled over for failing to signal a lane change — would die in jail, her death ruled a suicide. The trooper, Brian Encinia, would later be fired and charged with perjury, though the charge wouldn’t stick. And his dashboard-camera footage of her arrest would play for weeks on national news shows.
But until a Dallas news station obtained and aired the cellphone clip Monday night, no one had seen Bland’s own view of that tense moment in July 2015 — including her family and the attorney who represented them in civil court. — www.washingtonpost.com/...
It’s clear why prosecutors kept the video secret from everyone, even though it was on Sandra Bland’s cell phone and her family should have received access to it. The officer is clearly angry in the video, and physically threatens Ms. Bland.
Bland’s family said they never saw the video before and now call for Texas officials to re-examine the criminal case against the trooper who arrested Bland, which sparked outrage across the country.
“Open up the case, period,” said Bland’s sister Shante Needham said when shown the video.
Needham and other Bland family members believe the video was intentionally withheld.
“We also know they have an extremely, extremely good cover-up system,” Needham said.
— www.wfaa.com/...
— @subirgrewal