This is how the race wars begin: Texas cop goes ballistic on black teens in bathing suits... prepare for the backlash

Monday, June 08, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: police brutality, excessive force, viral video

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(NaturalNews) Most Texas peace officers are outstanding professionals as witnessed recently in Garland and Waco where local police officers protected innocent lives. But in this age of viral online videos, all it takes is one cop losing his cool and a kid with a video camera to paint all Texas police as racist badge wearers with anger management problems.

That's exactly what we're all witnessing today with this video of a Dallas suburb police officer (McKinney, Texas) appearing to lose his cool on a young black girl in a bathing suit. The officer has now been identified as Cpl. Eric Casebolt, and he's been put on administrative leave pending an investigation.

This video, which is now spreading in an ultra-viral manner across the news networks and social media, shows this police officer losing his temper and even drawing his pistol at one point. While this cop clearly engages in excessive force against a young black girl wearing a bathing suit, there's another aspect of this that the public reaction seems to have overlooked. I'll try to explain that below, using frames from the video itself.

As background to all this, the McKinney Police Department has released a statement, saying:

On June 5, 2015 at approximately 7:15 p.m., officers from the McKinney Police Department responded to a disturbance at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool. The initial call came in as a disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave. McKinney Police received several additional calls related to this incident advising that juveniles were now actively fighting.

First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands. Nine additional units responded to the scene. Officers were eventually able to gain control of the situation.

See the prepared statement video from McKinney police chief Greg Conley:

Pool party fight gets cops called to the scene

The video begins sometime after the cops arrived on the scene, and it's now rumored that a fight broke out between white resident adults and black youth members, following the white people demanding that the crowd of black partiers leave the pool and go back to their public housing. (You can imagine all the racial outbursts over this point all by itself...)

As Buzzfeed reports:

Teens at the pool party told BuzzFeed News the police were called after a fight broke out between adults and youths at the pool after the adults made racist comments telling the black children to leave the area and return to "Section 8 [public] housing."

Brooks, the 15-year-old who shot the YouTube video, told BuzzFeed News many students had arrived at the end-of-school celebration at the pool on guest passes. Some had also jumped over the fence.

"I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don't live in the neighborhood were in the pool," said Brooks, who is white.

Grace Stone, a white 14-year-old, told BuzzFeed News that when she and her friends objected to the racist comments about public housing an adult woman then became violent.

Also see Pool party confrontation thrusts McKinney into spotlight on police and race relations.

UPDATE: There has, however, already been some push back against the original claims of some reporters. As Breitbart.com is now reporting, many of the "kids" arriving on the scene were acting like a lawless mob:

One resident, Benet Embry, a black man, posted on Facebook about the events leading up to the police call. "Look, I LIVE in this community and this ENTIRE incident is NOT racial at all," Embry wrote. "A few THUGS spoiled a COMMUNITY event by fighting, jumping over fences into a PRIVATE pool, harassing and damaging property. Not EVERYTHING is about RACE. WE have other issues that NEED our attention other flights of made up make believe causes."

In another post he is critical of media coverage of the incident. "I've never seen such irresponsible reporting and miss management of media resources in my life," he said.

Another McKinney resident, Bryan Gestner, posted on Facebook, "This was a Twitter party that turned into a mob event. Jumping pool fence. Assaulting 2 security guards, attacking a mother with three little girls. The video doesn't show everything." He continued saying the kids were drinking and "smoking weed" and they would not listen to any of the adults around the pool.

"This isn't about race," he continued. "This is about outside kids invading our neighborhood and had no respect for authority or the residents here. I have a target on my back now and I have been threatened by these punks that they are gonna shoot up my house when all I did was try to control the mob and actually tended to the girl and the boy that had a bloody lip."

"Yall don't know the whole story," Gestner continued. "I commend the officer for handling this situation."

So a fight breaks out, and police are called to the scene.

Here's where things go awry, because police are tasked with the burden of trying to sort of what's happening when they arrive on the scene. Often one of the first tasks to achieving this is to order people to stay in their place, sit on the grass, etc. For whatever reason, the youth at the party apparently refused to obey those commands.

Somewhere along the line, a white cop totally loses his cool. The now-viral video begins somewhere after the cop has blown his top and gone into "rampage mode." He's screaming at the black youth:

"Don't make me f----n run around here with thirty pounds of godd--- gear on in the sun 'cuz you want to screw around out here..." the officer says to the youngsters he has handcuffed on the sidewalk. A group of teenage girls is standing nearby, continuing to engage in some sort of verbal altercation with police.



The officer orders them to disperse: "Y'all keep standing there running your mouth, you're gonna go too, get OUT of here... leave... you're leaving NOW! You are leaving NOW!"

One of the young black girls is clearly arguing with him at this point, as he's screaming, "Leave!" and pointing his finger across the sidewalk. The girls are verbally challenging the officer at this point, even though it's difficult to decipher exactly what they're saying.

In the next few seconds, this police officer is seen grabbing another girl quite violently, exchanging some words, and throwing her to the pavement. This excessive force clearly seems unjustified and unnecessary. It elicits outbursts from other members of the crowd standing nearby.



As he is attempting to control this girl, a large number of people rush toward the officer and the girl on the ground, with two fully-grown teenagers rapidly approaching the right flank of this officer, clearly in an "action" stance. This is the "gun side" of people who are right handed, and I can tell you from personal training and experience with police officers that cops are trained to be particularly wary of individuals approaching from their right side. Why? Because some people are attempting to seize your gun and use it against you!



That video frame is critical to understanding what happens next. This officer was able to see this threat rapidly approaching his periphery, and in his own mind, he clearly felt that a mob of people was "closing in" on him. In reality, these were mostly just pool partygoers who probably posed no serious threat to him, but for some reason he didn't process it that way. He felt he was threatened, and combined with his obviously heightened emotional state, he drew his pistol.

What's crucial to understand here is that the two young males backed off BEFORE this officer drew his pistol. They may have jumped back, reacting to the officer merely placing his hand on his pistol while still in its holster. And here is the critical mistake: This officer should have kept his pistol holstered and not drawn it at all.

As this video frame shows, when he does draw his pistol, his index finger is in the "safety position," meaning he is not yet in "fire mode" with the firearm.



Although this officer was clearly overreacting in drawing his pistol in the first place, there's something here that needs to be corrected in the mainstream discussion. This officer never actively aims his pistol. Yes, he "points" it at the feet of the teenage boys, but he's not actively "aiming" it there (i.e. lining up his visual sight picture with the sights on the barrel of the gun). Instead, what we see here is the officer carrying the pistol in what's called a "ready position," meaning it's held at a lower angle in a position that allows for a rapid response if a target needs to be acquired. (People who aren't familiar with the use of firearms rarely understand the difference between the "ready position" and "aiming" the firearm at someone.)

A ready position does not allow the firearm to be accurately fired at an intended target. It's not a position from which the trigger is squeezed to unleash a round. Again, I'm not excusing this officer's actions. He was WRONG to un-holster his weapon here, but at least he didn't make it even worse by actively acquiring targets and firing off rounds at them.

The following frame photo, used extensively by the media, shows this cop holding his firearm in the "ready" position, pointed toward the ground (if you draw a line down the barrel, it actually intersects with the ankles of one of the teen boys):



So YES, the cop was totally wrong to have drawn his pistol on these teens in the first place, but NO he never actively "aimed" it at any intended target, despite what the media is falsely reporting on this point.

Within a few seconds, two other officers come to his side at this point, with one of them giving chase after one of the young men who originally tried to surround the officer flees on foot. (He is later apprehended and handcuffed.)



With his pistol in his right hand, the officer now goes (verbally) ballistic at the teenage girl he originally tried to wrestle to the ground. Importantly, note that the officer is pointing the pistol at the ground, slightly behind him, and NOT at the girl. He never aims it at the girl.



At this point, he now re-holsters his firearm, apparently realizing he does not need a firearm to deal with this young girl on the ground.



He then proceeds to rather violently leverage her off the sidewalk and throw her to the grass, using her arm as a lever. This sort of move could easily break someone's arm if they don't have strong bones, by the way.



He then grabs the back of her head and screams, "ON YOUR FACE!" as he shoves her face into the grass. In MMA, we call this "ground and pound." It's not something you should ever do to an African-American teenage girl unless you want to start a race riot in your local city and end up with your own face as Public Enemy No. 1 in the mainstream media.



A struggle ensues, with the girl clearly trying to free herself from his physical control. Can you blame her? At this point, she's freaking out and probably not sure if she's even going to survive this encounter. At one point, the officer places both knees on her back to hold her to the ground.

On this point in particular, if you've never rolled on the mat with BJJ or MMA fighters, you have no idea just how difficult it is to breathe when a full-grown man digs his knees into your back and transfers his weight to your body. A lot of people start to panic in this position... especially if they've never been trained in mat work or wrestling moves of any kind. Thankfully, it's clear from the video that this officer is not actually pushing his full body weight on the girl. Much of his weight is actually shifted back to his own feet, with only partial weight on his knees to keep her on the ground.



A few minutes later, the police officer lectures a couple of black youth who are protesting their innocence, saying "We just got here." The officer walks up to them and says:

Let me explain something to you all again. I personally told you to get on the ground and stay on the ground. What did you do when I walked away? So you just did what everybody else did! And what everybody else did was illegal. You did it and you got caught. ... not you're sitting here paying for it... you're gonna sit here until we get this figured out.

Public outrage mounts

The public outrage over this video is focused primarily on two things:

#1) This cop's tossing around of the black girl and shoving her face into the grass.

#2) This cop's drawing his firearm, holding it in the "ready position" and then re-holstering it after a few seconds.

I completely agree that this cop's shoving around of the young black girl was excessive and unnecessary. He could have and should have showed greater restraint, and he was clearly acting out of anger, and he put that girl's safety at risk in the way he handled her.

On the issue of drawing his firearm, that was also excessive. This cop should have kept it holstered and merely put his hand on it. That seemingly was enough to make the teenagers approaching him leap away and create distance.

While I disagree with this officer's decision to draw his firearm, when he did draw the gun, he did at least carry it in the "ready" position rather than actively acquiring targets. In other words, he could have made this a lot worse! (Thank God he didn't start squeezing off rounds and causing bloodshed...)

Overall, this cop was clearly out of control and on some sort of emotional rampage that could have seriously harmed innocent people. This sort of behavior is not something we can tolerate in society.

Why we will NOT tolerate abusive policing in Texas

I'm glad to see the massive public uproar about this officer's unjustifiable behavior against a crowd of youthful partygoers. Texas is a state where most law enforcement officers are professional, upstanding citizens, but that's only because we take this sort of thing seriously, and we demand that our local peace officers respect ALL the citizens, no matter what their race, age, skin color or economic status.

The public backlash against this outrageous example of horrible policing is bound to be very loud and widespread. The message from the public is clear: We DEMAND that citizens of all races be treated with dignity by peace officers, and we will not tolerate police abuse of our teens and youth.

Public protests are already forming up in Dallas, and you'll probably hear more about this story through the entire week. But like most stories, what you're going to hear reported in the mainstream media is a lie: the officer never did aim his gun at anyone. He did, however, draw his pistol and bring it to a "ready" position. And whether that was appropriate or not is going to be hotly debated for weeks to come. Obviously, if this cop hadn't pulled his weapon, the video never would have made the news and we wouldn't even be dealing with this issue right now.

Whatever the outcome of all this, get ready for a ratcheting up of racial tensions between cops and citizens all across the country. Things are headed toward a tinderbox of anger that's ready to explode, and we must all call for calm, respect and dignity as this unfolds, or else we might find out own cities burning as some police throw in the towel and say, "Screw this. We quit!"

Believe me when I say you don't want the police to quit. Having no police would be far, far worse than anything we've seen so far...

Questions for consideration

Here are some questions to consider. Feel free to post your answers or comments in the discussion area below.

#1) Was this a racially-motivated incident to begin with? Did white residents cause all this by trying to get rid of black teens who were invited to swim there?

#2) What caused this cop to totally lose his cool and go ballistic? What caused him to misinterpret this situation and perceive himself as being threatened by an "angry mob" when he was more likely just dealing with a bunch of freaked out youth?

#3) Why wouldn't the members of the crowd just walk away? Why did they insist on ignoring the officer's orders and engaging with him verbally?

#4) Was the cop's pulling of his pistol justified in any way, or should the rule be that cops can never pull their guns unless assailants also have guns?

#5) Is there any circumstance under which cops are allowed to defend themselves? (Clearly the answer must be YES. What circumstances qualify?)

#6) What can we all do to improve police-community relations so that we can help prevent such escalating incidents from happening in the future?

#7) Nobody ever reads this far into any article before commenting on it, so congratulate yourself for actually gathering information before reaching your own conclusions.