Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Media, Society

Texas Police Officer Suspended After Release of Videotape Of Response To Disturbance At Pool Party

Screen Shot 2015-06-08 at 8.48.04 AMA 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.”

ericcasebolt-e1433704705104caseboltparty3-e1433735471752Casebolt,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?

437 thoughts on “Texas Police Officer Suspended After Release of Videotape Of Response To Disturbance At Pool Party”

  1. Ken Rogers

    You see what you want to see. You have drawn conclusions about the wrongdoings of the police, and this segment on tape simply reinforces your prejudices and hostility with regard to law enforcement. Nothing will change that, and surely I won’t ever attempt the impossible. Read Squeeky’s comment about what ACTUALLY may have happened here. A small video clip, which is taken out of context, reveals little as to what was occurring to prompt the police behavior. You should not criticize what you don’t know, yet you condemn law enforcement without acknowledging that a thorough investigation is needed to draw a conclusion. I get it. You are in the same camp as bigfatmike. Hope you two don’t ever need the police to come to your assistance. By then, society will have de-balled them to the point that they arrive on a tricycle, with a water gun.

  2. Ken, I am even more convinced that bam bam is that guy from the dilbert comic strip yesterday. Ignore him.

  3. bam bam
    1, June 8, 2015 at 10:53 am

    “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 [sic] a small segment on the video of what occurred and we do not witness or comprehend what preceded it.”

    In the first place, what JT wrote is, “…young people who are not clearly doing anything unlawful.”, rather than what you erroneously attribute to him.

    In the second place, what historical antecedent that day could possibly justify the thuggish verbal and physical behavior of the “peace officer” who was suspended by the chief of his department for that conduct?

    You fatuously accuse “bigfatmike” of being biased in his interpretation of the video, when it is obviously your disingenuous attempt to rationalize Casebolt’s patently thuggish behavior that betrays an egregious bias.

    Your rejection of the evidence of Casebolt’s misconduct provided by this video vividly demonstrates the constricted, filtering nature of authoritarian consciousness and how biased against and refractory it is to evidence of police brutality and other physical and psychological manifestations of that same authoritarian mindset.

    I repeat the question: what historical antecedent that day could possibly justify the thuggish verbal and physical behavior of Eric Casebolt?

  4. The rational, reasonable, just approach is to wait for an investigation, examine all evidence, and determine if the system is working.

    The activist approach to buying political points is to declare a conclusion based on a couple of minutes of testimony, skip the investigation, and go right to a microphone.

    If an investigation comes to a reasonable conclusion, one way or the other, and justice is served, then there is no story.

    My own brother, a Caucasian, was handcuffed and made to sit on the curb as a teenager, along with his friend, because his friend forgot the key to his house. The boys were crawling through a window when someone called the cops. The friend didn’t have ID on him, and the cop wasn’t going to just take his word for it. So he and his friend got to do the Seat of Shame, handcuffed, on the curb in full view of all the passing traffic. They both meekly complied, and got a good story out of it that will get lots of miles. My father’s response was that the cop was just doing his job, and both the boys did the right thing by cooperating. He didn’t need a microphone. If my brother had disobeyed the cop’s orders, my father would have been upset with him, not the officer. Worst case scenario was that if no one was home to confirm their bona fides, they would have been taken to the police station until one of the parents was reached. Oh, the joys of the Days Before Cell Phones.

    1. In watching the tape with the former officer now attorney, I see that the cop was doing his best to keep control. If you watch carefully you can see some of the yhuts are doing what they are supposed to be doing. However, the girl in the orange bikini struck out cross-country. You do not let something that bright get away from you. 🙂 And that hair is just too easy to grab on to. He did not hand on long. Just enough to let her know who was in control. I am going to guess she does not have a scratch on her.

  5. Hmmm, here’s some more of the story:

    PLEASE HELP! That (now viral) video of the officer in McKinney subduing a girl in a bathing suit was in OUR neighborhood. The situation was NOT what is being reported…

    A DJ setup in a public space next to the private pool in our neighborhood on Friday and played loud explicit (F-bomb) music for multiple hours (it is unclear if he was invited by a resident as no one has claimed responsibility). The teenagers (both black and white) were being brought into our neighborhood by the carload because the DJ was tweeting out invites to a “pool party” for $15 (obviously unauthorized by our neighborhood). The teens began fighting with each other and pushing their way into our private pool. Some were jumping our fence. The security guard was accosted when he tried to stop the beginnings of this mob scene. Some residents who live around the park/pool area tried to come out and settle things down. The teens started yelling racial slurs at our neighbors and started assaulting people and property (throwing bottles at cars and attacking a mother at the pool with 3 young children). The first officer on the scene was by himself. At that time, the party had grown to a large, aggressive crowd. As the officer arrived, many teens started running through our neighborhood. Many of the teens were being very aggressive and yelling at the officers as more arrived.

    This was a very dangerous situation for the officers AND the teens/residents not involved. The news media has refused to hear the neighborhood’s side of this story. The video being distributed is only a very small segment of what happened. This information being distributed by the media and others is extremely distorted and in some cases outright lies.

    PLEASE HELP US STOP THE BROADCASTING OF THIS IGNORANCE. The media is trying to make it look like our neighborhood is a white’s only, racist area. Anyone who has spent even a few minutes in our area knows this is an outright LIE.

    More at the link:

    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/06/heres-the-rest-of-the-story-behind-the-police-abuse-at-the-austin-pool-party/

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  9. I doubt that the vast majority of people who showed up at an event publicized on Facebook were classmates. But lets for the sake of argument say that is true. I would imagine that the rules of the Homeowners association allows each resident a certain number of passes to their pool. This is to simply keep it safe and the numbers reasonable so residents would not be overwhelmed by “visitors.”

    This happens all the time in many venues. I remember going to the beach at the Jersey Shore where we had to present a town pass to be able to get on the beach. If you didn’t have a pass you would be asked to leave or be subject to arrest.

    People pay a lot of money to live in these areas where the rules of the Home Owners Association dictate the use of the facilities. It could be the pool. The golf course. The gym.

    There is only one place where such rules are not necessary. The library.

  10. @DBQ

    Damn! That is probably the best link that has ever been put here! That guy thinks like me! Here is what I totally agree with, and have said about the same thing here many times:

    In past ages, there have been different ways to gorge on blinkered, hateful, joyous denunciation: Religious fanatics burned heretics, commissars executed kulaks, Muslims beheaded apostates (and still do). Today, liberals hate “racists”—and “homophobes” and “sexists” and “fascists”—with the same Old Testament hatred. They are so drunk on self-righteous denunciation they are impervious to reality. Religion has not declined in the West; it has only taken new forms. Communism was religion for Communists, and liberalism is religion for liberals.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  11. @ Max

    “Were these adults who were harassing the black teens and throwing out derogatory and insulting language, invited? Or were they the ones crashing this pool party?”

    You might try actually reading the articles about this incident.

    officers responded to a “disturbance” at the Craig Ranch North community pool at 7:15 p.m. The statement notes that the juveniles at the scene “do not live in the area or have permission to be there.”

    Your “ecstatic self-righteousness denouncing racism” must be reaching an orgasmic crescendo right about now. 😀

  12. Max, Nope, no racist issues here for me. Just disrespectful kids. I could care less of the color.

  13. Trooper
    You don’t know, do you?
    Where he came from or his afilliation to the PD or the neighborhood. You. Just. Do. Not. Know. Do ya?

  14. Relevant link

    Pathological Altruism http://www.amren.com/features/2012/07/pathological-altruism/

    PA is generally defined as a sincere attempt to help others that instead harms others or oneself, and is “an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one’s own needs.” Several of the contributors offer tantalizing definitions: PA is likely when people “falsely believe that they caused the other’s problems, or falsely believe that they have the means to relieve the person of suffering.” Or, it is “the false belief that one’s own success, happiness, or well-being is a source of unhappiness for others.” PA “often involves self-righteousness,” and can result in “impulsive and ineffective efforts to equalize or level the playing field.”

    The pleasure of knowing, with subjective certainty, that you are right and your opponents are deeply, despicably wrong. Or, that your method of helping others is so purely motivated and correct that all criticism can be dismissed with a shrug, along with any contradicting evidence.

    This is the kind of conviction that can lead to acts of altruism that are clearly pathological. At the same time, whether these authors know it or not, they have provided a strikingly vivid portrait of mental state of anti-racism and of the motives that drive it. In the West, there is nothing that offers more ecstatic self-righteousness than denouncing “racism.”

    😀

  15. DBQ
    classmates. Classmates. Classmates.
    They were classmates.

    Question:
    Were these adults who were harassing the black teens and throwing out derogatory and insulting language, invited? Or were they the ones crashing this pool party?

  17. According to the organizer, it was some local adults that started this by harassing the kids and making racist derogatory remarks.

    Harassing the TRESPASSING partying kids, who had no right to be on the owner’s or renter’s property? If there were a crowd of unruly kids or adults, of any color or denomination, deciding to party down on my property there would be more than just rude words exchanged.

  18. Well he is not a victim which he had a good chance of being if the cops were not called to get the situation under control.

  19. White men in authority running around shackling black teens… Who is that overweight white man assisting this officer?

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