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McKinney Teen

Source: KBXX / KBXX

 

A Texas police officer has been suspended after grabbing a 15-year-old Black teenager by her braids and wrestling her to the ground and pointing a gun at other teens at a pool party.

According to Fox4 in Dallas reporter Zahid Arab, residents in the community believed the “officer’s safety was at risk.” The officer in the disturbing video (below), identified as Eric Casebolt, arrived at the local community pool Friday to respond to a call describing a “disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave,” a statement from the McKinney Police Department’s Facebook read.

“McKinney Police received several additional calls related to this incident advising that juveniles were now actively fighting,” the department wrote. “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.”

The teenager who recorded the incident told Buzzfeed News that the White adults were angry that Black children who did not live in the neighborhood were in the pool. Other teenagers told the website that the incident occurred after White adults “made racist comments telling the Black children to leave the area and return to ‘Section 8 [public] housing.’”

Given the national climate of police brutality and deadly practices in the news, fleeing, even if no crime was committed, doesn’t seem far-fetched or ridiculous. Sadly, for McKinney residents, this, along with “profanity,” warrants such trauma and brutalization of Black bodies.

 

(advance to 2:40 mins in the video to see the altercation in question)

 

 

And now people that are supporting the the officer have been posting signs around the pool where the incident took place.