Police video shows traffic stop escalating when woman balks

Associated Press

HEMPSTEAD, Texas

A police dashboard video released Tuesday shows that a Texas state trooper drew a stun gun on a black motorist and said, “I will light you up” when the woman refused to get out of her car during a routine traffic stop.

The roadside encounter between the trooper and the driver swiftly escalated into a shouting confrontation as the officer tried to pull 28-year-old Sandra Bland from her vehicle. Days later, she was found dead in jail in a case that has caused her family and supporters to dispute whether she hanged herself with a plastic garbage bag in her cell, as authorities have said.

The video posted by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows the trooper stopping Bland for failure to signal a lane change. After he hands her a written warning, the trooper remarks that Bland seemed irritated. The Illinois woman replies that she is irritated because she had changed lanes to make way for the trooper’s car.

The conversation quickly turns hostile when the officer asks Bland to put out her cigarette and she asks why she can’t smoke in her own car. The trooper then orders Bland to get out of the vehicle. She refuses, and he tells her she is under arrest.

Further refusals to get out bring a threat from the trooper to drag her out. He then pulls out a stun gun and makes the threat about lighting Bland up.

When she finally steps out of the vehicle, the trooper orders her to the side of the road. There, the confrontation continues off-camera but is still audible. The two keep yelling at each other as the officer tries to put Bland in handcuffs and waits for other troopers to arrive.

Out of the camera’s view, Bland goes on protesting her arrest, repeatedly using expletives. At one point, she screams that he’s about to break her wrists and complains that he knocked her head into the ground.

The trooper said in an affidavit that after handcuffing her for becoming combative, she swung her elbows at him and kicked him in his shin.

In the affidavit released Tuesday, trooper Brian Encinia said he then used force “to subdue Bland to the ground,” and she continued to fight back. He arrested her for assault on a public servant.

The trooper has been placed on administrative leave for violating unspecified police procedures and the Department of Public Safety’s courtesy policy.”