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>Three years after Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell in Texas, a video that she took during the minor traffic stop that led to her arrest was published by a local media outlet. Bland’s death, ruled a suicide by authorities, led to nationwide protests by those who felt it was the result of yet another case of abusive behavior by white police toward black civilians. Now, Bland’s family, outraged over the video’s absence in court filings, is calling for the state to reopen the case against the state trooper who pulled her over. Advertisement The video, released by WFAA in partnership with the nonprofit Investigative Network, shows the same interaction already seen in the dashcam footage of state trooper Brian Encinia as well as in video taken by a bystander. It does not reveal any new information about the encounter, but it does underscore that the scene inside the car was not a dangerous one—at least from the officer’s perspective. Bland was clearly holding a cellphone up to film the encounter and showed no sign of any threatening actions. Advertisement Advertisement In the short video, Encinia, having just pulled Bland over for allegedly changing lanes without a signal, tells her to leave the car so he can search it. “Get out of the car,” he shouts. “Now!” Bland asks why she’s “being apprehended,” and Encinia, who has opened Bland’s car door, threatens to “drag you out of here.” He pulls out his Taser, lighting up the weapon’s flashlight. “Get out of the car,” he shouts at her, pointing the Taser toward her. “I will light you up. Get out. Now.” Advertisement Bland exits the car. “Wow. Wow,” she says. “You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?” Encinia then barks at Bland to get off her phone. “I have a right to record,” she answers, “This is my property.” But after Encinia repeats the demand, Bland ends the video. Advertisement Advertisement Bland, three days later, was found dead in her jail cell. Encinia told investigators later that “my safety was in jeopardy at more than one time.” He was charged with perjury in 2016 after a grand jury concluded he had lied about his reasoning for making her exit her car, concluding he wasn’t trying to more safely conduct a traffic investigation but instead that he “removed Sandra Bland from her vehicle because he was angry she would not put out her cigarette.” But prosecutors later decided the safer bet was to drop the charges in exchange for Encinia’s promise to never again work in law enforcement, according to the New York Times. Encinia was not charged with any other crimes. Advertisement After the video surfaced Monday, Bland’s family said that there was further proof that Encinia had been lying, that he had no reason to fear for his safety, and that he should not have escaped perjury charges. “[The video] not only shows that [Encinia] lied, but that he really had no business even stopping her, period,” Bland’s sister Shante Needham told WFAA. “And at the end of the day, he needs to go to jail.” The video’s sudden appearance also upset those who wondered if the state had been intentionally hiding it. While the Bland family’s lawyer insisted he had not seen the footage before and suggested to the Associated Press that it could be the result of human error, Needham suggested to WFAA that the video could have been intentionally withheld. The Texas Department of Public Safety disputes the family’s lawyer’s claim that it didn’t provide the video, insisting that all parties to the civil suit had access to it and that it was included as part of a large hard drive of evidence from the investigation. A Democratic state legislator said Monday night he would look into why the family didn’t see the video before, calling the episode “troubling.”<doc-sep>Editor’s Note: David A. Love is a writer and commentator based in Philadelphia. He contributes to publications including Atlanta Black Star, ecoWURD, and Al Jazeera. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidALove. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) — Nearly four years after the arrest and death of Sandra Bland, a cell phone video she recorded of the fateful encounter with a Texas state trooper has been released, prompting calls to reopen an investigation. Courtesy David Love David A. Love This new evidence is a reminder that police brutality and misconduct are serious problems that persist. Black people still face criminalization, racial profiling, and violence at the hands of law enforcement while police officers rarely face criminal charges or jail time in cases of deadly force. In 2015, Bland, who moved from Illinois to start a new job at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, was pulled over near campus for failing to use her turn signal. Three days after her arrest, she was found hanging in her Waller County jail cell. Her death was ruled a suicide. Reporter Brian Collister, who filed a records request to the Texas Department of Public Safety, obtained the cell phone video Bland recorded during the traffic stop, which was published this week by WFAA in partnership with the Investigative Network. The 39-second video shows Texas state trooper Brian Encinia ordering Bland out of the car and saying, “I am going to drag you out of here,” before he pulls out what appears to be a stun gun and shouts, “I will light you up.” He repeatedly demands that Bland get off the phone – and even though she says she has a right to record, the video ends shortly after Encinia tells her to put the phone down for the third time. In the arrest warrant, Encinia wrote that he arrested Bland for “assault on a public servant,” and claimed she swung her elbows at him and kicked him. This new evidence – which Bland’s family said was withheld from them – seems to disprove Encinia’s claim that he had feared for his life. He was fired in 2016 and indicted on a perjury charge, which was dismissed in 2017 after he permanently surrendered his law enforcement license. Bland’s sister Sharon Cooper said the family filed a civil rights lawsuit following the 28-year-old’s death because they “weren’t getting answers” after multiple inquiries into the case. On Tuesday, she told CNN, “The revelation of this video existing to us and it not being revealed to us throughout the duration of the case at all, what that does is that puts our trust in them and their credibility on shaky ground with regard to taking what they share with us at face value.” The Texas Department of Public Safety said the video was “provided to all parties as part of the discovery process and was available to the media on request.” The circumstances surrounding Bland’s death, which sparked national outrage at the time, and the results of the subsequent investigation are unfortunately all too familiar. And Encinia’s claim that he feared for his life is one we’ve heard before. Often, police officers justify the taking of a life – particularly a black life – on the grounds that they feared for their lives and acted in self-defense. This defense can be a winning strategy, especially when juries will give police officers the benefit of the doubt in a nation where black people are too often regarded as a menace and a threat to public safety. The legal standard for police to justifiably use deadly force varies from state to state, but is basically whether a “reasonable” officer would do the same in that same situation, rather than whether the victim actually posed a real threat. This fear defense is a nebulous standard for police, who are provided broad leeway to use force to restore order and maintain public safety. Researchers have repeatedly documented the mental associations Americans make between blackness, criminality and violence. The fear of black people is often normalized and the abuse of black people in contact with the police is justified under the cloak of this fear. Tulsa Officer Betty Jo Shelby, who is white, was acquitted of manslaughter after she fatally shot Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man. During the trial, she told the court she fired her weapon because she feared for her life. Now, Shelby is teaching an NRA firearms course. Similarly, the officers who killed Philando Castile and Michael Brown claimed they feared for their lives – and avoided punishment (Officer Jeronimo Yanez was found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter and intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety in Castile’s death. In Brown’s case, a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson). Less than two weeks ago, however, a black Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor was convicted for murdering a white victim named Justine Ruszczyk, while her family received a $20 million settlement from the city of Minneapolis. During the trial, the prosecutor suggested Ruszczyk did not appear threatening because she had blonde hair and wore a pink t-shirt. The prosecutor, who seemed to insinuate that white women are not threatening and that black people are, articulated assumptions about race and criminality that have been an American reality since the days of slavery. Black people are often disproportionately targeted when it comes to stop-and-frisk practices, traffic stops, and misdemeanor arrests. They also make up a disproportionate number of police killing victims. And racial bias plays a role in schools as well. Black girls, for example, are 5.5 times more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts, according to a National Women’s Law Center report. Researchers concluded the disparity was not the result of misbehavior, but the racist and sexist stereotypes of black girls and women as angry, aggressive or promiscuous. It was far too easy to dismiss Sandra Bland as an angry black woman who was arrested for her bad attitude. She knew her rights. Those who place blind faith in law enforcement argue that violence can be avoided by simply complying with officers’ demands. But for black people, even following orders and doing the right thing can still lead to tragedy. And even though many black parents talk to their children about what to do if they are stopped by the police, that information is neither a magic wand nor a bulletproof vest. Get our free weekly newsletter Sign up for CNN Opinion's new newsletter. Join us on Twitter and Facebook Despite calls from presidential candidates Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke and others to reopen the criminal case in Bland’s death, the special prosecutor, who had access to the video when Encinia was indicted on a perjury charge, has not budged. It leaves many people asking if evidence was withheld. Did Sandra Bland really commit suicide? And were other families denied crucial answers to the deaths of their loved ones?<doc-sep>
Investigative Network : " The Family of Sandra Bland — Who Died In A Waller County Jail Cell — Is Calling For A Re-Opening Of The Criminal Investigation Into Bland's Arrest And Death After Seeing Footage For The First Time " — "New cellphone footage from the now infamous traffic stop of Sandra Bland shows her perspective when a Texas state trooper points a taser and yells, 'I will light you up!' In police shootings and controversial arrests, law enforcement usually tells the first story. But what happens when more video is released long after the incident? "The new video — released as part of a WFAA exclusive in partnership with the Investigative Network — fuels the Bland family’s suspicions that Texas officials withheld evidence in her controversial arrest and, later, her death. "Until now, the trooper’s dashcam footage was believed to be the only full recording of the July 2015 traffic stop, which ended in Bland’s arrest. The trooper claimed he feared for his safety during the stop." New York Magazine: "Why Are So Many ‘Bad Apple’ Police Officers Bad in the Same Way?" — "Brian Encinia said that he ordered Sandra Bland out of her vehicle, forced her to the ground, and handcuffed her on July 10, 2015, because he feared for his safety. 'My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,' the former–Texas Department of Safety trooper told the agency’s Office of Inspector General. 'I had a feeling that anything could’ve been either retrieved or hidden within her area of control.' "But newly released footage contradicts this account. On Monday, reporters with Dallas television station WFAA aired a 39-second cell phone video captured by Bland that had not been previously made public. It depicts an irate Encinia threatening to 'light … up' the black 28-year-old with his stun gun and demanding that she exit her car and “get off the phone,” all while Bland asks him repeatedly why a “failure to signal” called for such treatment. 'The video shows that [Encinia] wasn’t in fear of his safety,' Cannon Lambert, a lawyer for Bland’s family, told the New York Times. 'You could see that it was a cell phone. He was looking right at it.' "Bland was found dead in a Waller County jail cell three days later; authorities ruled her death a suicide. Nationwide protests followed. The Naperville, Illinois, native — who, before her arrest, was en route to start a new job at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas — became the most prominent woman to die in police custody as a result of police violence during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement." New York Times: "Sandra Bland, It Turns Out, Filmed Traffic Stop Confrontation Herself" — "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 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." Stefano Kotsonis produced this hour for broadcast.