The original dashboard camera video showing Sandra Bland's arrest by a Texas state trooper had several continuity problems and anomalies, raising questions on social media and by some media outlets as to whether the footage was manipulated or edited in some way.
I edit footage for a living. But anyone can see that this official video has been cut. Read/watch. Why? #SandraBland http://t.co/2JXy9Zc4Y3
— Ava DuVernay (@AVAETC) July 22, 2015
But the Texas Department of Public Safety insisted the video wasn't edited, and on Wednesday uploaded a new video without the anomalies to YouTube. "Yesterday's video was not edited," spokesperson Tom Vinger wrote in an email. "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."
After the original video showed the initial traffic stop and arrest, there were several parts that seemed to loop. Here is one such segment, clipped by journalist Ben Norton, in which the same man can be seen walking out of a truck multiple times:
Another part showed a white car entering and disappearing from the frame over and over:
And it happened yet again later on:
These oddities were extremely obvious, so it always seemed possible that there was some sort of glitch in the dashcam technology that Texas troopers use, an issue with editing software, or a problem on YouTube's end. But in a case already mired by questions about whether Bland was killed or whether she committed suicide in her jail cell, the issues raised more doubts.
