So we finally got the dascham footage for the incident that led to Sandra Bland’s arrest. Well, sort of but not exactly.
As Crooks And Liars reported, the video is heavily edited. Here’s what they noticed (from the article);
In the video, which is more than 52 minutes long, there are several spots where cars and people disappear and reappear. When it released the video, the department did not mention any editing. The audio ends more than a minute before the video images do.
One of the more conspicuous spots comes 25 minutes and 5 seconds into the video, when a man walks from a truck off screen and then reappears suddenly at the spot where he began walking. The image flutters for a moment before resuming.
There are no breaks in the audio during this time. People are heard talking through the video gaps.
In another spot, at 32:37, a white car appears on the right side of the screen and then disappears. A moment later, what appears to be the same car comes back into the frame and turns left. During this time, Encinia is talking about what occurred during the arrest. There are no breaks in his speech.
What look like the same cars keep appear in the same locations, following their same paths, beginning at 33:04.
Again, the audio continues uninterrupted.
I noticed several more things. First, let’s just start with the video and the editing. In the first part of the video, the sound is crystal clear. You can hear officer dickhead opening Bland’s car door clearly at the 9:32 point in the video. Oddly, at 19:32 when the female officer is opening the doors and the trunk and closing the doors, all you get is white noise. White noise which, by the way, appears to be exponentially louder than it was in the beginning of the video. Just go from 4:00 straight to 18:30. You can hear how white noise has inartfully been dubbed into the tape. There are so many gaps of the audio where you can only hear white noise, it’s almost comical the way they edited it. At one point, officer dickhead’s conversation ends in mid sentence and all you can hear is white noise for several minutes. You can’t hear officer dickhead moving Bland from the ground and putting her in the car. There’s no sound of the car door opening or closing. Strange, since (as I already pointed out) the sound of Bland’s car door was clearly picked up by the dashcam microphone.
I think that we can all agree that the missing parts of the audio did not contain sounds that would incriminate Bland and bolster officer dickhead’s story. Speaking of which, here’s his affidavit;
I had Bland exit the vehicle to further conduct a safe traffic investigation. Bland became combative and uncooperative. Numerous commands were given to Bland ordering her to exit the vehicle. Bland was removed from the ear but became more combative. Bland was placed in handcuffs for officer safety. Bland began swinging her elbows at me and then kicked my right leg in the shin. I had a pain in my right leg and suffered small cuts on my right hand. Force was used to subdue Bland to the ground to which Bland continued to fight back. Bland was placed under arrest for Assault on Public Servant (TXPC 22.91 (B)) The vehicie was inventoried and reieased to Crown Towing. Bland was transported and booked into the Walter County Jail for Assault on Public Servant (TXPC 22.01)
Bullshit. He demanded that she step out of the vehicle because he didn’t like her tone.
Now to the substance of the video.
At 25:42, you hear him start to try and work on what the charge will be with (I assume) his boss. That’s the fucking problem with the tape. There was no assault. Wanna know how I know? Officer dickhead described what the legal definition of assault is at 25:38 (his words);
“Assault is if a person commits an (couldn’t make out the next few words) intentionally knowing they are causing bodily injury to another.”
She never did anything remotely resembling assault at the time he was attempting to pull her out of the car. She pushed his hands off her. That doesn’t sound to me like she was intending to cause him harm. After he pulls his taser on her, she voluntarily gets out of the car. There are no punches, kicks, slaps, or anything coming from her that would fall under his stated definition of assault. In fact, none of those things happen before we can see that he has her in handcuffs. We see no evidence of any of these things after she’s in handcuffs.
At 12:36, officer dickhead calls in saying that he has her under control. She’s in fucking handcuffs, wearing a summer dress and sandals. You never hear him say anything to her other than “stop moving” before she says, “you’re about to break my wrist”. So who is being combative? Who is committing assault? Then she starts crying out. That’s when you hear the female cop. At 14:19, you hear officer dickhead tell the bystander who taped the event that they had to leave so we know that she’s on the ground with his back on her knee at that point.
At 14:51, he says, “…you’re going to jail for resisting arrest”.
And there’s the problem. Cops incessantly use “resisting arrest” as a reason to arrest people. There needs to be an underlying charge in order for there to be an arrest to resist. There was no underlying charge. In fact, he and his boss are clearly heard pulling a charge of “assault” out of their collective asses in order to figure out a reason for why this woman is in handcuffs for not using her turn signal and smoking a cigarette in her own damned car.
There should never be “resisting arrest” charges without an underlying reason for the arrest. No arrest; no resisting arrest. I don’t even know why they’re allowed to bring someone in on just a “resisting arrest” charge. That’s complete bullshit. It enables any asshole cop whose ego has been bruised by someone exercising their first amendment rights to call them a motherfucker to make an arrest, just to prove a point. And that’s how they use “resisting arrest” charges. Yes, you do have a first amendment right to be as profane as your little heart desires with a cop.
“Resisting arrest” enables cops to abuse their power and flush taxpayer money down the toilet because they got their fee fees hurt.
That’s the biggest problem I see in this video, and anyone focusing on anything else has missed the most important part of this incident.
