Friends and supporters of the 28-year-old Chicago woman who committed suicide in a Waller County (Texas) jail cell now claim raw video footage of her traffic stop was edited.
Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia stopped Sandra Bland near Prairie View, Texas, for changing lanes without signaling.
Dash cam footage shows Encinia approaching Bland’s car and asking to see her driver’s license and insurance.
Bland had an attitude and was noncompliant when the officer asked her to extinguish her cigarette.
Bland refused to put out the cigarette and she subsequently refused to follow Encinia’s order to get out of her vehicle.
The trooper opened the car door and Bland became combative. Encinia drew his stun gun and Bland calmly exited the vehicle with her hands in the air.
At some point during the ensuing scuffle, Bland kicked the officer. She was then arrested for assaulting the officer.
The Texas Department of Public Safety posted the raw dash cam video footage from the trooper’s patrol car on its YouTube channel on Tuesday.
A YouTube user noticed scenes that appeared to have been edited. Bland’s family and friends seized upon that as evidence of some sort of conspiracy.
The footage from the dash cam video which shows the initial traffic stop was not altered. Also, the sound of the confrontation between Bland and the trooper was not edited.
The video does appear to jump around long after Bland was secured in the back seat of the patrol unit.
What the family can’t dispute is video from outside Bland’s Waller County jail cell that shows no one entered her cell before she hung herself with a garbage can liner on Monday morning.
Bland was taken to the Waller County jail and booked by jail staff on Friday evening. The jail staff observed that Bland had no injuries.
She was allowed one phone call on Monday, which she placed to a bail bondsman who offered to call her mother for her.
Bland’s family was reportedly securing 10% of Bland’s $5,000 bond.
An hour after she spoke with the bondsman she was found dead in her cell.
Some law enforcement experts say Bland should not have been arrested in the first place.
Vernon Herron, a senior policy analyst, said Bland’s attitude was not good cause to arrest her.
“A person’s attitude or their demeanor is not probable cause to make an arrest,” said Herron.
“Regardless of the situation — it doesn’t matter where it happens — a DPS state trooper has got an obligation to exhibit professionalism and be courteous … and that wasn’t the case in this situation,” said Steven McCraw, the department director.
Bland’s family can’t believe she would kill herself. But, by her own admission, Bland suffered from depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In stressful situations, healthy people with good coping skills can see a light at the end of a tunnel.
But depressed people in stressful situations can only see darkness and no hope.
The typical thought process of a depressed person is, “I would be better off dead.”
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