Protesters in McKinney, Texas, call for white officer who pulled his gun on black teens at pool party to be fired
Union disputes charges of racial bias
Protesters gathered in McKinney, Texas, on Monday night, three days after a white police officer responding to reports of a disturbance at a pool party was seen acting aggressively toward black teenagers, throwing a bikini-clad girl to the ground and pulling his gun on two others.
The officer, 41-year-old Eric Casebolt, was placed on administrative leave as a video of the incident sparked outrage on social media, where many drew comparisons to recent high-profile cases of police bias in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
Carrying signs that read "Black Lives Matter" and chanting "All lives matter," demonstrators called for Casebolt to be fired.
"He shouldn't keep his job," Jahi Adisa Bakari, the father of another teenage girl at the party, told the Associated Press. "And I'm not going to stop until he is fired."
Protesters marched to the private community pool, which was "temporarily closed" Monday night.
At a press conference Sunday afternoon, McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley said a total of 12 officers responded after the department received "several additional calls" reporting that the teens were "fighting and refusing to leave."
First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands. Nine additional units arrived at the scene. Officers were eventually able to gain control of the situation.
In a statement, the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called for police to release the entire incident report and recording of the 911 calls that the officers were responding to:
While we don’t know all the facts about the party, the crowd, or whether a fight broke out, what we do know is that the police response, as seen on the video, appears to be a textbook case of overuse of force. A well-trained police department would have responded more cautiously, with less hostility, and using sophisticated crowd control methods that favor de-escalation rather than escalation — especially when it comes to youth and children. Without question, guns were not needed and, in fact, risked turning a group of partying teenagers into victims of a potentially deadly encounter.
At a City Council meeting Monday, Nikki Perez, a black resident of McKinney, said that Casebolt "blew his credibility when he opened his mouth and started cursing at the kids."
"I don't excuse the behavior of those teenagers, but if I call 911, then I wouldn't want that cop to respond," Perez said.
Meanwhile, police union officials said that Friday's incident had nothing to do with race.
"The McKinney [Fraternal Order of Police] assures that this was not a racially motivated incident," the union said in a statement to CNN, "and can say without a shadow of doubt that all members of the McKinney FOP and McKinney PD do not conduct racially biased policing."
Benét Embry, a black local radio personality, agreed.
"This was a teenage party that got out of hand," Embry told the AP.
"This was not a racially motivated event — at all. This whole thing is being blown completely out of proportion," he told CNN. "I may or may not agree with everything that the police officer did, but I do believe he was trying to establish order."
Dajerria Becton, the girl who Casebolt pulled to the ground, said she was an invited guest at the party and was obeying his orders to leave when he grabbed her.
"He grabbed me, twisted my arm on my back and shoved me in the grass and started pulling the back of my braids," Becton, 15, told KDFW-TV. "I was telling him to get off me because my back was hurting bad."
In a video statement released Monday, McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller said that Casebolt would remain on administrative leave until the department's internal investigation was concluded.
"Chief Conley has assured me that he is working with all deliberate speed to conclude this process," Loughmiller said. "Part of the review will include evaluating the incidents that led to the need for police assistance to try to prevent this type of situation from happening again."
