This article originally appeared on, www.latimes.com
A new, apparently glitch-free version of a dash-cam video showing the confrontation between Sandra Bland and a Texas trooper during her arrest was released Wednesday after questions arose about whether the first version had been altered.
The new video is about three minutes shorter than the original footage released a day earlier. It did not contain two key glitches which had prompted a flurry of speculation over the original video — footage that appeared to be missing or repeated at around minute 25 and minute 33.
Instead, it appeared to show a continuous record of the July 10 roadside encounter that preceded Bland’s arrest in the small northwest Texas town of Prairie View.
The video has come under intense scrutiny because the incident that began with a seemingly routine traffic stop ended with Bland’s death three days later in her Waller County jail cell.
Sheriff’s officials have said her death was a suicide, but her family and supporters question that finding.
The dash-cam video in Officer Brian T. Encinia’s car, originally released Tuesday, showed an angry, escalating confrontation after the officer initially pulled Bland over for failing to signal a lane change.
By the time it was over, Bland was roughly removed from her car, handcuffed on the ground and arrested on suspicion of assaulting a public servant, a felony charge.
Raising a storm of speculation on social media were at least two moments on the video in which a car could be seen entering the field of view twice in immediate succession, and then simply disappearing.
In a statement mailed to reporters Wednesday morning, Tom Vinger, press secretary for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the dash-cam video was unedited and blamed the glitches in the original video on technology.
“Yesterday’s video was not edited. The entire video was uploaded Tuesday to include the audio and video of the conversation the trooper had by telephone with his sergeant, which occurred after the arrest. Some of the video was affected in the upload. That technical issue has now been resolved,” he said.
Click here for more
