'Open up the case, period': Sandra Bland's family demands answers over new video of her arrest

The clip starts with the furious voice of a Texas state trooper. “Get out of the car! Now!” he shouts.

When the woman filming asks why he would “threaten to drag me out of my own car,” the trooper pulls out his Taser. “Get out of the car!” he screams, pointing it at her torso. “I will light you up!”

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 on 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.

Now, Bland’s family is alleging that the Texas Department of Public Safety purposely withheld the video, raising fresh questions about official misconduct in a case that became a linchpin of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparking nationwide protests and demands for police accountability.

“Open up the case, period,” Bland’s sister Shante Needham told WFAA, which unearthed the video in partnership with the nonprofit Investigative Network.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/open-up-the-case-period-sandra-blands-family-demands-answers-over-new-video-of-her-arrest/ar-AAB1nsP?li=BBnb7Kz