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Sandra Bland’s mother: Trooper perjury charge ‘not justice’

Three days later, the woman died in jail.

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In the audio from a dashcam recording of the arrest, Encinia can be heard telling Bland, “Get out or I will remove you”.

The Department of Public Safety announced Wednesday Encinia will be fired because of the perjury indictment.

During a legislative inquiry in July, Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw criticized Encinia for his actions during the stop and said he violated department policy, behaved rudely and failed to de-escalate the situation.

Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith said Brian Encinia will likely surrender sometime Thursday afternoon.

The video shows the trooper holding a stun gun and yelling, “I will light you up!” after Bland refuses to get out of her vehicle.

Bland was stopped on July 10 by Encinia for failing to signal a lane change in Prairie View, about 80km northwest of Houston. He was processed in the same room where Bland was booked last summer after her confrontation with Encinia during a traffic stop.

Eakin also said his client reported that Bland reached into her purse when he ordered her to extinguish a cigarette before the arrest. She was found dead in her jail cell three days later, on July 13, hanging from a jail cell partition with a plastic garbage bag around her neck.

In an arrest affidavit he said Bland was out of control, calling her “combative and uncooperative”.

“A Class A misdemeanor, I can’t be expected to be excited about that, because I feel there’s so much more that he should have been indicted on”, Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, said at a news conference Thursday.

His perjury charge is a misdemeanor. A grand jury indicted Trooper Brian Encinia on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, with the misdemeanor charge. The video showed him shouting at Bland and failing to answer her when she asked numerous times why she was being arrested.

Bland’s arrest and death drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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The Texas state trooper charged with perjury in the arrest of Sandra Bland has turned himself in to authorities. Authorities had withheld the Rangers report, citing the grand jury process that has now finished.

DPS Trooper in Bland case surrenders to Texas Rangers