A McKinney, Texas police officer has been suspended pending review after the posting of a videotape where he draws his gun and manhandles a group of teenagers outside of a pool party. The officer has been identified as Cpl. Eric Casebolt and he is shown being verbally and physically abusive toward young people who are not clearly doing anything unlawful.
The pulling out of the gun is a rapid escalation in a call over a dispute between a mother and a girl at the party. The McKinney Police Department’s Facebook page states that officers responded to a “disturbance” at the Craig Ranch North community pool at 7:15 p.m. It added that the juveniles at the scene “do not live in the area or have permission to be there.” It further says that people failed to respond to orders and officers struggled to “gain control of the situation.”
Casebolt,40, is a 10-year-veteran and serves as a vice president of McKinney’s police union. He received an award for “Patrolman of the Year” in 2008. The Washington Post reports that he is an instructor at Executive Self-Defense and Fitness and has a website that heralds his “ strong working knowledge of human behavior” and “experience in the use of all levels of force.” As is often the case, people have collected various pictures of Casebolt though the one dressed as an Indian chief at a party seems to be the favorite. That is part of the reality of the world of social media today.
Do you consider this level of force to be justified?
Here is an account of what happened written by someone who says he lives in the neighborhood. https://www.facebook.com/MCQuattrin/posts/10153334459553361
I find that to be full of BS. I know of no rational person who would set up something like that. I have seen another video of the woman who sponsored the pool party, and one of the girls on the first video mentioned that she had a pass for the party since it was on a private community pool. Judging by the racists here, this is simply a lie to justify keeping blacks residents and friends out of the pool.
BamBam, there is no deeply ingrained bias for cops among the vast majority of comments here. My brother was a Milwaukee cop for many years before retiring a few years ago. I got to know many cops, socialized with them and don’t have any animosity to police in general.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/texas-police-officer-suspended-after-pulling-weapon-on-teens#.tsVMOvK5P
MUCH more information here. Including a video that shows the original altercation between two white female adults with black teens.
Has anyone besides bam bam referred to the cops as pigs?
Truly fascinating how allegedly self-described educated individuals, due to their inherent and deeply ingrained biases toward police, choose to view a mere snippet of a video and to then, based on moments caught on tape, proceed forward with the wholesale condemnation of the police. If these kids had left the property, once they were instructed to do so, this entire incident could’ve been avoided. When the police tell you to move or to leave, you move or leave. You don’t mouth off. The police are viewed by these kids as their equals; they are not. Since our culture no longer values authority figures–
police are routinely referred to on this blog as pigs–how surprising is it that a bunch of rowdy teens don’t view the police commands or orders with any sense of immediacy?
From what I understand from local news reports, this was a party at a neighborhood subdivision pool, and these kids did not live in the neighborhood. Local news is reporting that a DJ posted on social media that there was to be a party at the pool and invited anyone and everyone who has social media and happened to read the invitation. News of the party spread like wildfire. I do not know if the DJ lives in the neighborhood or how he had access to the neighborhood pool.
This is a quiet suburban neighborhood which was suddenly overrun with partiers, two of whom were having a fist fight in the street (a girl and her mother, I believe). There was video on the news of the two women fighting and slapping one another, with an excited crowd gathered around them. According to the news reports, neighborhood residents had no idea who these people were or why they were brawling in their streets. This is why residents called the police — to break up the brawl, end the party, and send home anyone who was not a resident.
Neighborhood residents (who do not want their faces shown, of course) are on TV thanking the police for stopping the melee and ending the party. Residents also posted a sign at the pool thanking the McKinney police department.
It was telling when he said ” don’t make me run with 30 pounds of equipment in the heat”.
There is no evidence that any of these kids were trespassing. A black resident of the neighborhood threw a pool party. A white resident of the neighborhood didn’t like it that they were there and supposedly picked a fight and struck one of the kids. Why did the cop completely ignore the close proximity of the white people at the scene, yet went nuts when the black teens came close when he was abusing the teen girl in the bikini?
Obviously, dudes running is reason enough at a pool party to believe a crime has been committed and dudes did it, and every person standing there, i.e., “part of the mob,” was obstructing justice and needed to be detained. Not.
As for brandishing his firearm, two healthy young fellows rapidly approached the officer when he nose-dove the young lady in the sweet swim suit (my best imitation of Kip Dynamite) into the grass, and I suspect that the officer could have feared for imminent great bodily injury to himself, so maybe that was the only action remotely justifiable in his comedy of errors.
The officer should be transferred to desk duty in the bicycle-theft department, but he should first have his mouth washed out with soap.
I’m wondering where this desire for people to experience a cop simulator comes from. In the US, anyone turning on a television can experience all the cop simulation they want. How many cop dramas are there? All of them?
This is hardly something new. American television has always dedicated much of it’s prime time to cop dramas. The messages are clear: Clint Eastwood is the good guy; the bad guy is dangerous; Harry braves the danger, gets the bad guy and saves the girl in a nick of time all the while enduring his boss yelling “CALLAHAN!” because those who ride a desk just can’t understand what it takes to work the streets.
We’ve seen the cop’s wife worrying every day that this day at work might be his last. And that’s true. But it’s also true for the waste collector’s spouse. In fact, it’s almost twice as likely. A roofer? A carpenter? A pilot? A trucker? Police work isn’t the only dangerous line of work, but it does get far better than most in its public relations.
But, really, just how dangerous is a fourteen year old girl in a bikini? So dangerous that she threatened to call her Mom?
fiver – how dangerous is a teenage girl in a bikini? Well, one of the first things you learn in teaching high school is not to break up the fights with the girls. That is where you are going to get hurt. They go feral.
To me, another clear case of police escalating a situation, not de-escalating the situation. The treatment of the girl in the bikini was abysmal. Running after kids that may (may) have committed a trespass violation turned a calm situation into a near riot.
Randyjet, I agree with you 100% on this one.
This morning NPR had an interview with three generations of cops from a family on their views of change in law enforcement. Pretty interesting and non-confrontational.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/412805101/3-generations-of-law-enforcement-speak-out-about-policing-in-america
http://www.11alive.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/06/08/texas-police-officer-reaction-pool-party/28678413/
McKINNEY, Texas — The organizer of a pool party in Texas where a police officer’s interactions with a 15-year-old girl were caught on video, said Sunday the police officer had “no reason” to act the way he did.
Along with her sister and mother, Rhodes organized and threw the pool party and cookout Friday in the Craig Ranch neighborhood of McKinney. Rhodes said everything started with a woman, who picked a fight with her, and then the police were called. McKinney police confirm they were called to the pool for a disturbance and discovered juveniles fighting and refusing to leave.
Young people that are clearly not doing anything unlawful? Remember, the police were called to this pool to respond to a problem. That’s right, a problem. We only witness a small segment on the video of what occurred and we do not witness or comprehend what preceded it. There is nothing CLEAR about it. How can one determine that those in the video had done nothing wrong without a knowledge of all the facts? Why was that one young woman being singled out? What had she done PRIOR to the tape rolling? I suspect that nobody commenting here has any clue, yet that doesn’t seem to curb the rush to condemn this officer. It’s like witnessing a fight, where one of the combatants is somehow getting the better of the other participant. Taping just the part, where one of the combatants is overtaking the other individual, may allow a person to think that the one prevailing is the aggressor. It could very well be the opposite, where the aggressor has chosen a stronger opponent and that opponent is merely using justifiable self-defense. I bring this up for one reason: condemning the officer, without knowledge as to what conditions and behavior existed, prior to the tape rolling, is irresponsible. With these commentators, though, it’s like chum for sharks.
“There is a very good piece in this mornings USA Today by Marisol Bello, a reporter who took the police simulator test. ”
I have run through these simulators in the past. I won’t pretend I understand what they are today, but my experience is a little bit older than 5 years. So I’m aware of the abilities and limitations they hold.
The biggest limitation on simulators is just the nature of them: the officer goes into it with the mindset that he will need to make a shoot/don’t shoot decision. And 99% of the time in the real world, that’s not even a consideration. Yes they do a good job trying to show the stress and decision making process of a traffic stop, or domestic, or drunk patron in a bar. But its effectively a video game.
The real world isn’t like that. This officer had absolutely no business pulling his gun. When the gun comes out that means you’ve made the decision that you’re willing to pull the trigger. Was this cop going to shoot a 14 year old girl in a bikini for mouthing off? Of course not. John Wayne Jr needed to keep his pistol in his waistband and use some common sense. But the training today of officers seems to emphasize shoot first, and common sense will be figured out later.
The kids say that they were in fact mostly invited guests or actual residents with access to the pool. Talking back to a cop is not against the law and neither is being disrespectful to a cop. The girl that he grabbed may have been mouthing off but she was clearly moving away from the scene as instructed when the cop ran and grabbed her. You people crowing about “obey” the cops are kind of fascist-like. I have seen people on the show ‘Cops’ being far more belligerent to police officers without being manhandled or even touched like this girl was. You also fail to mention the incident that led to the police being called in the first place which is 100% relevant to this story. Adult white women angry because the pool was being used when they wanted to use it, started insulting some of the kids and instigated a fight with a teen aged girl which was also caught on camera. This is one incident where people who like it when cops mistreat black people should maybe just stfu because despite being black, these were suburban kids from middle class families, not inner-city “thugs” and “gangstas”.
The cop certainly didn’t have control of the situation and he made it worse.
Some background: A DJ circulated an invitation on social media for a party, $15 admission. Lots of kids showed up. It’s not clear if the DJ had the right to have such a party. It was loud and one, or more, of the residents objected and called the cops. First thing the cops should have done is cut the music, take over the PA and told the kids to disperse, party’s over. Perhaps the DJ should have been arrested for creating the scene I’m sure a creative cop/DA could come up with a charge unless the DJ had permission from the HOA to host the party, in which case, no charges.
It is incredible that we have such bigots on this thread. Virtually all of those kids were acting with respect, calling the thugs SIR, and even going so far as to return the cops flashlight he had dropped. It was only the out of control cop who could not decide whether or not a person was supposed to leave or sit on the ground. Then he compounds his errors by grabbing a girl in a bikini and throwing her to the ground for no known reason. Then he continues dragging her around and at no time says you are under arrest or give any rational reason for the abuse. Then when two girls approach him as he is grabbing her, he pulls his gun . At that point, those kids all should have run for their lives. If the cop had told them to stay, they had legal rights to get the hell out of the place with a crazed cop on the loose. Fortunately the other two cops on scene got him to put his gun down and nobody was shot and killed.
The fact is that this started when a legal black resident of the place invited her friends over for a cookout and gave them passes. The some white woman told them to get out of there and go back where they should be and called them niggers. She then compounded the abuse by slapping one of the girls. So from what I read, it is too bad those kids don’t know the law. They should have demanded that the cops arrest and jail the white woman who hit the girl and perform a citizens arrest on her. So some of the kids do the normal thing when they see white cop coming an RUN for their lives. That sets off the nutty cop since if you run you must be guilty of something. I am only surprised that some of those kids did not wind up dead from that cop.
vad, Many of the simulations are about a person having something in their hand that is NOT a weapon, training cops to observe and speak to the suspect. But, I sense you are not interested in another perspective.
BFM, I am on record NUMEROUS TIMES saying there are bad cops. I also have said MANY times the silence of fellow officers is wrong. I have also said many times cops have not adjusted to the ubiquity of cameras, they are kicking and screaming like spoiled children. What concerns me is I see the pendulum swinging radically and making all cops evil. This situation in Texas looks bad to me.
@Nick: “What concerns me is I see the pendulum swinging radically and making all cops evil.”
We agree that not all cops are bad. In fact, I bet we agree most officers are, at least, pretty good. And every correction contains the possibility of over reaction.
Yet I think we are left with a system that does a poor job of identifying and dealing with officers with a history of abuse. We see evidence of that reluctance to deal with the few ‘bad apples’ in fellow officers who ignore abusive officers, prosecutors who seem to have very different standards for officers and ordinary citizens, and administrative boards that reinstate or rehire the rare officer that is actually penalized for misconduct.
Not only that, I have to wonder if we have somehow built a training system that produces hyper-vigilant officers that too quickly resort to force. I am not talking about the very few situations where an officer really does have to make a split second decision. On the contrary, we have recently seen situations where one has to wonder if the civilian had time to understand the order let alone comply before the officer resorted to force.
In my opinion we definitely need a correction. We should also require that correction not set impossible standards or penalize officers acting reasonably in a difficult situation.
We face tough questions regarding how we should police our neighborhoods. But that does not imply we can accept the status quo or that we can defer consideration of difficult situations.