Austin, Texas -- Cellphone video recorded by Sandra Bland, a black woman found dead in a Texas jail in 2015 following a confrontational traffic stop, shows for the first time her perspective as a white state trooper draws his stun gun and points it at close range while ordering her out of the car. The 39-second clip revealed by the Investigative Network, a nonprofit news organization in Texas, aired Monday night on Dallas television station WFAA-TV. Bland was found hanging in her jail cell outside Houston three days after her arrest. Her death and dashcam video showing Trooper Brian Encinia trying to pull the 28-year-old Chicago-area woman out of her vehicle galvanized the national Black Lives Matter movement and others protesting police misconduct. The clip begins at the most dramatic moment of the traffic stop near Prairie View A&M University: Encinia has opened Bland's car door and draws his stun gun as she tries to steady her phone's camera. The flashlights on the stun gun flick on and Encinia yells, "Get out of the car! I will light you up. Get out!" An undated photo shows Sandra Bland, 28, who was found dead on Monday, July 13, 2015, in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas. KHOU Bland exits 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. The emergence of the cellphone video raised questions about who had seen it until now. Cannon Lambert, an attorney for the Bland family who settled lawsuits against the state and county jail that totaled nearly $2 million combined, said he never saw the clip until it was recently shared by a reporter. Lambert said he didn't see the video in evidence turned over by investigators, which he said he wanted to believe was just human error. Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, who in 2017 carried the "Sandra Bland Act" that the family criticized for being weakened before signed into law, said Monday night he would look into why Bland's family never saw the footage. "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 said in a statement. Katherine Cesigner, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the cellphone video was known to all parties at the time and said that two years following the litigation, it was "unclear what arrangements, if any, were made by the plaintiffs to view the video." The department disputed the premise that the video was not provided, saying it was included as part of a large hard drive of evidence from the investigation. It also said Sandra Bland's cellphone video had previously been publicly released in 2017, when it was given to an Austin television station under open records law. Encinia, who was fired after being indicted for perjury over the traffic stop, said he came to fear for his safety after stopping Bland for failing to signal a lane change. "The video makes it abundantly clear there was nothing she was doing in that car that put him at risk at all," Lambert said. The perjury charge was later dropped in exchange for Encinia agreeing to never work in law enforcement again. That Bland was holding up a cellphone is clear in the original dashcam footage. Chip Lewis, Encinia's attorney, said 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 and 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. Several of the Democrats running for president 2020 called for the case to the reopened, including the two candidates from Texas, former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro. Both O'Rourke and Castro called for the case to be reopened, as well as former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Immediately re-open the investigation into Sandra Bland's arrest and death. There must be full accountability and justice. https://t.co/IMMo4u0fQe — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) May 7, 2019 This video is compelling proof that Trooper Encinia lied, that Sandra Bland posed no threat, and that there was no basis for her arrest. This case should be reopened and justice should finally be served. — Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) May 7, 2019<doc-sep>AUSTIN, Tex. — [For more about police violence and unrest, go here] Sandra Bland had just driven in from Illinois to start a new job in Texas when a state trooper pulled her over for failing to signal a lane change. As the exchange grew angry and the officer pulled out a stun gun, she recorded a 39-second cellphone video whose public broadcast this week has prompted calls for a renewed investigation into her arrest and death nearly four years ago. Ms. Bland, a 28-year-old African-American from the Chicago area, was taken into custody in southeast Texas following the confrontational 2015 traffic stop and was found hanging in a jail cell three days later in what was officially ruled a suicide. The case, which drew international attention, intensified outrage over the treatment of black people by white police officers and was considered a turning point in the Black Lives Matter movement. [The Death of Sandra Bland: Is There Anything Left to Investigate?] The video surfaced for the first time publicly Monday night in an investigative report on the Dallas television station WFAA that included interviews with Ms. Bland’s family and supporters, who accused officials of concealing information that they said should have been made public early in the investigation.<doc-sep>
In any case, he said, the cellphone video does not represent new evidence, since it was known to investigators and was disclosed to the family in response to the wrongful-death lawsuit they filed in the case. The suit was settled in 2016 for $1.9 million. A number of questions were also raised after Ms. Bland’s death about what happened at the jail, and why a 28-year-old woman on her way to start a new job would take her own life. Most of those questions have already been put to rest: Both her mental health background and the physical evidence in the autopsy report pointed to suicide. The confrontation at the traffic stop led to Ms. Bland being arrested on a charge of assaulting a public servant. She was booked on July 10, 2015, into the Waller County jail in Hempstead, a town of about 6,000 in southeast Texas, and she was placed in a housing area for women. Three days later, on July 13, a guard making the rounds found her hanging in her 15-by-20 foot cell in what officials described as a “semi-standing position,” with a plastic trash-can liner around her neck and affixed to a U-shaped metal hook overhead. She was pronounced dead shortly after 9 a.m. The results of the autopsy, announced by officials on July 23, indicated that her injuries were consistent with suicide, not homicide. The autopsy found that the condition of Ms. Bland’s head, neck and hands lacked any signs of a violent struggle. Markings around her neck were also consistent with suicide, the medical examiners said. Waller County officials later expressed regret that Ms. Bland had not been placed on suicide watch, particularly in light of her disclosure on a jail screening form that she had once tried to kill herself with pills after losing a baby. She also reported at the time she entered the jail that she had battled depression and was feeling depressed at the time.