McKinney pool party cop resigns following public outcry

ARTURO GARCIA/Raw Story:

McKinney, Texas police Cpl. Eric Casebolt resigned from his position on Tuesday, amid increasing calls for his ouster from the department, WFAA-TV reported.

City Attorney Jane Bishkin confirmed his resignation on Tuesday evening.

Casebolt, who was named the department’s “Officer of the Year” in 2008, was suspended after video surfaced late last week of him tackling 15-year-old Dajerria Becton and pulling his gun out against two other black teenagers while responding to a dispute involving a local pool party.

As the footage spread online, local civic groups called for his firing, while the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) demanded a full investigation of his actions.

Casebolt’s departure came a night after hundreds of demonstrators attended a rallycalling for him to be fired.

How Fox News Is Justifying Police Conduct In McKinney, In Three Steps

BY RUPALI SRIVASTAVA/Think Progress

Fox host Megyn Kelly said Monday evening that the 14-year-old black girl who was thrown around and sat on by a police officer in McKinney, Texas, was “no saint.” Kelly’s comment was one in a series aimed at justifying police conduct outside the neighborhood pool party.

Video of the incident, which spread over the weekend, shows McKinney police Cpl. Eric Casebolt manhandling the bikini-clad teenage girl, pulling her by her hair and slamming her face into the ground before sitting on her back. He is also seen yelling profanity at other black teenagers, telling them to sit on the grass or leave the area, even pulling out a gun and chasing two boys with it in hand.

1. Attack The Victim

Police officer Cpl. Eric Casebolt wrestles a teenage girl to the ground.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

News coverage on Fox in the days since the video surfaced has repeatedly attempted to justify Casebolt’s actions and distract from accusations of racial profiling by shifting the blame to the young teenagers involved.

Neighborhood resident and witness Sean said on the Kelly File that the officer had to match the aggression of an already chaotic situation to “calm the crowd down.” Sean declined to disclose his last name out of concern for his safety. Others on the show echoed his statement that the officer was forced to act the way he did because of the rowdy environment. “They were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing,” an anonymous witness said.

Radio host Richard Fowler, who was also on the show, noted that the kids were “fleeing” because the era of police brutality and racial profiling rightfully scared them into running away. Kelly interrupts and responds “The girl was no saint, either. He had told her to leave, and she continued to linger.” A panelist on Hannity said, “You can get yourself out of these situations if you just comply.”

Other accounts, however, say the crowd was already dispersing and the situation was calming down by the time the officers arrived. According to Brandon Brooks, the teenage boy who filmed the viral video, a fight between two middle-aged white women and a young black woman occurred a few minutes before the police reached the pool, leading many people to disperse. Sean admitted that the white adults were not handcuffed and that he saw Casebolt only chase after black people near the pool.

2. Glorify The Officer

Casebolt pulls a black teenager to the ground.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

Fox hosts have chosen to highlight Casebolt’s “good track record,” informing viewers of his 10-year veteran status and patrolman of the year award.

On Fox’s The Five, co-host Tom Shillue claimed the video wasn’t shocking to him all. “I’m looking at the video and thinking, ‘OK, the cops are breaking up a party, these guys are great.’” Shillue and others have been quick to defend the officer’s actions and discuss possible reasons for his conduct. Sean said on the Kelly File that Casebolt ran out of handcuffs, so he had to sit on the girl to wait for officers to bring more to him. “I think if he would have had handcuffs on him, he would’ve been able to cuff this girl, and it wouldn’t have gone this far.” None of the witnesses brought onto the Kelly File said racial profiling was a factor in the officer’s handling of the situation.

What they do not mention in their discussion of Casebolt’s track record is that he’s been sued for racial profiling before. In 2008, a black man arrested by Casebolt filed a lawsuit accusing him and other officers of harassment, sexual assault, racial profiling, and failure to render aid. The lawsuit was later dismissed because charges on the man were still pending.

3. Find ‘Witnesses’ To Reinforce The Narrative

Fox hosts have emphasized the importance of context in understanding the video, but they can’t seem to agree on the reason the pool party escalated to such violence. Witnesses on and off Fox shows have given different explanations. On Fox, guests said the kids were smoking weed, fighting amongst themselves, and generally being rowdy and inappropriate. The party host, however, said in a newer YouTube video that white adults at the pool made racist comments towards them. Host Tatiana said the verbal abuse escalated to a physical altercation between the adults and teenagers at the pool. This information was not shared on Fox.

“Let me be clear,” said resident Benet Embry, “the community I live in is not a racist community.”

An excerpt from Embry’s Facebook post following the incident.

CREDIT: SCREENSHOT/FOX NEWS

Embry, who is African-American, continued to talk about the incident, calling it a pool party that had simply gotten out of control. Guests on the show like former LAPD detective Mark Furman, resident and witness Sean, and an anonymous female witness defended Casebolt’s actions and the neighborhood residents in their decision to call and support the police. Witness stories told on Fox reiterate the narrative that the teenage girl’s unwillingness to obey the officer led him to use force on her.

“This is a great community,” Embry said. “Nobody’s walking around with hooded sheets and burning crosses. Just a normal, average, everyday suburb in America.”

Conservative Twitter Racists Mock McKinney Police Brutality: ‘Black People Can’t Swim’ (TWEETS)

VERA from Addicting Info

Last week, a disturbing video surfaced of a white police officer brutalizing black teens in McKinney, Texas while breaking up a neighborhood pool party.

As the video went viral and made headlines nationwide, Cpl. Eric Casebolt was suspended over the footage, which captured him chasing unarmed, nonthreatening teens with a gun and brutally slamming a petite bikini-clad girl to the ground before kneeling on her back with his full body weight.

Despite how clear-cut the footage was in capturing the McKinney police using racially-charged excessive force, conservative media did what it could to protect the white cops, and several racist Twitter users followed suit. And who better than Fox News to lead the way? The right-wing media channel reported the story, but implied that viewers should be skeptical of the video’s footage:

Yahoo! News was also an unexpected offender.

Many Twitter users defended the cops, stating that the teens deserved to be brutalized and criticized the lack of parental guidance for the teens’ behavior – very reminiscent of racist reactions seen in Ferguson when Michael Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson.

Some users even had to audacity to mock the incident and perpetuate racial stereotypes to make light of the horrendous situation.

These comments are disgusting representations of the segregation and racism that still prevails in America. The sad thing is, if this incident hadn’t been recorded (by a white person, who the police ignored), those teens would have gotten records – which would have impacted the rest of their lives, damaging their college and job applications. Systemic racism is no joke.

Anyone who is still in doubt about police brutality’s connection with race needs to see this tweet, which compares the police reaction to the black teens in McKinney, Texas (who were unarmed and hadn’t killed anyone) and the police reaction to a mob of grown gun-toting white bikers in Waco, Texas – where 9 people were killed:

Being black in America shouldn’t be a death sentence, and it shouldn’t be a reason to be targeted, mistreated and brutalized like it was in McKinney. This incident was completely about race – and there continues to be a disturbing world of a difference in the way white people and black people are treated. Comparing the 14-year-old girl who was brutalized by Cpl. Eric Casebolt in McKinney to how serial child molester Josh Duggar has been treated by the media, this tweet says it all:

White McKinney resident: Cop ‘deserves a medal’ for pulling gun on black kids at pool party

DAVID EDWARDS/Raw Story

A Texas woman said on Monday that a McKinney police officer “deserves a medal” after he pulled his firearm on black teens who were having a pool party in her neighborhood.

In video that was recorded on Friday, Cpl. Eric Casebolt could be seen manhandling a young teen girl in a bathing suit and pulling his gun on other teens who approach him. Casebolt was placed on administrative leave over the weekend after the video went viral.

While many said that the the officer went overboard in responding to complaints about the pool party, at least one white resident of the neighborhood, who refused to be named because of alleged death threats, told CNN that the officer was a hero.

“I want everyone to know that that police officer, along with everyone else, they were completely in the right and protecting everyone,” the woman opined to CNN’s Nick Valencia. “He was not out of line. I completely support him drawing his weapon or a Taser or whatever it was that he did pull because he was being attacked from behind.”

“I believe that if your life is threatened, you have every right to pull a gun. He probably didn’t intend on using it. I feel horrible for McKinney PD and and the backlash they’re getting for this.”

The woman added that the officer “deserves a medal for what he did.”

“I don’t believe he was out of line one bit,” she insisted. “Those kids were taunting them and cursing them out, have no respect for authority and as soon as their parents got here, they didn’t even care one bit about how they were treating the officers and why they got into that situation.”

Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast June 8, 2015.

Ex-McKinney cop: Police force has a race problem and they need to ‘get it under control’

TOM BOGGIONI/Raw Story

Appearing on Fox4, a former McKinney police officer blasted the conduct of Officer Eric Casebolt, who threw an unarmed teenage girl to the ground, before saying local police authorities need to nip their race problem in the bud before it grows.

According to former officer Pete Schulte, Casebolt was over the line when he roughly pulled 15-year-old Dajerria Becton to the ground, saying, “I don’t care what she was yelling at that officer. Anything would not have justified throwing her to the ground and pushing her down and throwing her face into the concrete like he did.”

Commenting on Casebolt drawing his service weapon as spectators came to help the screaming girl, Schulte called it “crazy,” before noting that one of the fellow officers who came to Casebolt’s aid grabbed his arm as if pulling the weapon down.

Schulte, who is now an attorney, had advice to the McKinney Police Department, saying they needed to get the fallout from the viral video “under control,” due to the racial implications.

“There is an indication based on watching the video that the white people who were around the officers weren’t talked to, they weren’t pushed away, they weren’t told to get on the ground, they weren’t put in handcuffs. The only individuals McKinney police were doing that to were those that were African-American,” he said.

“McKinney police have got to get this under control before tomorrow,” he stated “At this point in America, in policing, There’s too much out there right now with Ferguson. They got to get out there in front of this and make sure that citizens, even outside of the city of McKinney, understand that they’re going to do the right thing and take corrective action and that this was not racially motivated.”

Watch the video below from Fox4:

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