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Authorities in Texas have denied holding a mobile phone video of a roadblock involving Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was found hanged in a prison cell near Houston in 2015.
Bland, who was coming from outside Chicago, used his phone to briefly film a white soldier as he pulled out a stun gun and shouted, "I'll enlighten you!" By taking her out of her car . She died three days later. His death was deemed a suicide.
The video had not been seen publicly until it was aired this month by a Dallas TV channel. Lawmakers and Bland's family said they had never seen the clip. They said the video proved that Private Brian Encinia had no reason to fear for his life and wondered if he should have faced charges going beyond perjury.
At a hearing held Friday in the Texas capital, Phillip Adkins, General Counsel of the Texas Department of Public Security, responded to a Democratic legislator's animated questions about why the 39-second clip was not have not appeared so far.
Adkins said the DPS "did not illegally detain evidence from Sandra Bland's family or his legal team".
The representative of the Democratic State, Garnet Coleman, disputed the explanations of state officials, saying that he had never received the video while he was asking all the Evidence as Chair of the House Committee on County Affairs.
He told Adkins that he had received a "data dump" entangled from four disks and that the description of Bland's cell phone video in the state's investigation report was not honest.
"I do not agree with you," said Adkins. "I think it's a fair and accurate description of the video."
Coleman interrupted.
"You can disagree all day, because I do not have eyes that lie, sir," he says. "I have examined this more than anyone."
Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland's mother, attended the hearing but did not testify. She told reporters that she heard "a lot of differences" but declined to comment further.
Private Encinia was fired after being charged with perjury. He said he feared for his safety after arresting Bland for failing to report the lane change. The perjury charge was dropped in exchange for Encinia's acceptance to never work in the field of law enforcement again.
Mr. Coleman said that Encinia had "left the light" and accused state officials of not acting ethically in the handling of the video.
Hours after the hearing, the Texas DPS released a copy of a letter sent in October 2015 to Bland's family lawyer, Cannon Lambert, informing him that a "Mobile phone download" from Bland's phone was locked on a USB key. Lambert stated that he had never seen the video in evidence being handed to him.
The Texas Legislature will adjourn until Monday, until 2021. A proposal that could still reach the office of Governor Greg Abbott would make it more difficult to incarcerate people for minor offenses, sought by some lawmakers following the death of Bland . Law enforcement groups, however, fight the measure.
In 2017, Coleman passed a law on Sandra Bland that includes de-escalation training, independent death investigations in county jails, and more racial profiling data. Advocates of the criminal justice reforms praised the changes, but the act disappointed Bland's family, who felt he did not take into account the circumstances that led to his death.
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