Release of arrest video filmed by Sandra Bland spurs cries to reopen Texas inquiry

Three days after Sandra Bland was arrested in a 2015 traffic stop, she was found hanging in a jail cell. Her death in the Waller County jail north of Houston was later ruled a suicide.

A previously unpublished 39-second video of the arrest, which was recorded by Bland on her cellphone, was obtained by the Investigative Network. The video has sparked new cries from the family and their attorney for Texas authorities to reopen the investigation into Bland’s arrest, according to published reports.

Until the release of the new video, the only video footage of the arrest was believed to have come from the dash cam footage from Trooper Brian Encinia’s patrol vehicle.

On July 10, 2015, Encinia pulled over Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from the Chicago area, in Prairie View after she failed to use a turn signal before making a lane change. During the traffic stop — recorded by a camera fastened to the officer’s patrol car dashboard — Encinia is seen losing his temper when Bland questions why she should comply with his order to put out a cigarette and exit the vehicle.

The cellphone video shows Encinia open Bland’s car door and draw his stun gun. The flashlights on the stun gun flick on and Encinia yells, “Get out of the car! I will light you up. Get out!”

Bland gets out of the car and continues to record Encinia as he orders her onto the sidewalk. The stun gun is still pointed at her and the flashlights remain on. He instructs her to get off the phone, to which Bland replies, “I’m not on the phone. I have a right to record. This is my property.”

The video ends seconds later after Encinia tells her to put the phone down.

Encinia was fired and charged with perjury, although the charged was later dropped in exchange for Encinia agreeing to never work in law enforcement again. Encinia had said he came to fear for his safety after stopping Bland.

“The video makes it abundantly clear there was nothing she was doing in that car that put him at risk at all,” Cannon Lambert, the attorney who represented the Bland family and negotiated a $1.9 million civil settlement for the family, told the Associated Press.

The new video was obtained by the Investigative Network once the criminal investigation was closed, according to reporting from the Star-Telegram’s media partners at WFAA.

Bland’s death triggered national scrutiny and the passage of a new law that took effect Sept. 1, 2017, shepherded through the Texas Legislature by State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

Upon hearing about the previously unpublished video, Coleman said he was dismayed that it appeared to have been withheld from the family and their attorneys, and that prompted him to release the following statement.

“It is troubling that a crucial piece of evidence was withheld from Sandra Bland’s family and legal team in their pursuit of justice,” Coleman’s statement said. “The illegal withholding of evidence by one side from the other destroys our legal system’s ability to produce fair and just outcomes.

“As Chair of the House Committee on County Affairs that looked into the death of Sandra Bland, I will make sure that the Committee will also look into how this happened. I am glad to see that the Sandra Bland Act is already making a difference in terms of better training for jailers and new officers.”

Coleman says he will ask officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Attorney General’s Office to testify at a hearing that will be called before the current legislative session ends on May 27 in light of the new video footage.

The House Committee on County Affairs held five hearings lawmakers used to investigate the death of Sandra Bland during the 2017 legislative session.

The Texas Department of Public Safety disputed the premise that the video was newly discovered evidence and not provided, saying it was included as part of a large hard drive of evidence from the investigation. It also said Bland’s cellphone video had previously been publicly released in 2017, when it was given to an Austin television station under open records law, according to an emailed DPS statement.

“The video recording from Ms. Bland’s cellphone was specifically identified multiple times in the Ranger Report of Investigation,” the DPS statement said. “The Ranger report was made available to all the litigants during the civil litigation filed by her family. At all times, the department complied with its discovery obligations in the civil litigation.”

Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, told the AP, “the existence of the cellphone video was known to all parties” at the time and that two years after the family’s lawsuits it is “unclear what arrangements, if any, were made by the plaintiffs to view the video.”

Brian Collister, an Investigative Network reporter, filed a public information request in August 2017, the DPS statement said. Collister specifically requested the video from Bland’s cellphone, and the department provided the video to Collister at that time, according to the statement.

“Again, we reiterate that the video is not newly discovered and has in no way been concealed by the department,” the DPS statement said.

Lambert, the Bland family’s attorney, said in the WFAA story that he hadn’t seen the video until Collister showed it to him.

Calls from a Star-Telegram reporter to Lambert’s office seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Lambert told the AP he didn’t see the video in the evidence turned over by investigators, which he said he wanted to believe was just human error.

Chip Lewis, Encinia’s attorney, told the AP the cellphone footage doesn’t illuminate anything beyond what the dashcam video already showed.

He said “furtive gestures” made by Bland from inside her car presented a risk, which was the impetus for Encinia trying to remove her.

“From a law enforcement standpoint, it had nothing to do with her being agitated as you may have seen on her recording,” Lewis said.

This story includes information from the Associated Press and the Star-Telegram’s archives.

This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 11:56 AM.