Video taken by Sandra Bland on her cellphone shows the arrest that started the sequence of events that eventually led to her being found dead in her jail cell three days later.
WFAA-TV reports Bland, 28, who was arrested in 2015 during a traffic stop, recorded the video that shows the Texas state trooper pointing a Taser at her, telling her to get out of the car. When she refuses, the troops yells, “I will light you up!”
It was previously believed the trooper’s dash camera video made the only recording of the incident.
Bland’s family told WFAA-TV the video just being shown now is more evidence of police withholding evidence of her arrest and death.
“Open up the case, period,” said Bland’s sister, Shante Needham.
“We also know they have an extremely, extremely good cover-up system,” she added.
The Texas Department of Public Safety denied the video was intentionally withheld.
“The premise that the video was not produced as a part of the discovery process is wrong,” DPS said in a statement to WFAA-TV. “A hard drive containing copies of 820 Gigabytes of data compiled by DPS from its investigation, including the dashcam videos, jail video footage and data from Sandra Bland’s cell phone, was part of discovery.”
The new video, and the controversy over Bland’s arrest, has reached the 2020 presidential candidates.
“Sandra Bland should be alive today. The job of this police officer should have been to protect and serve — not harass and threaten. We have a broken criminal justice system that we will address when we are in the White House,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted on Tuesday.
