Hero Cop Protects Texas From Black Teenagers At Pool Party

Friday was just another day in post-racial America, with a bunch of cops descending on a disturbance at a pool party in McKinney Texas and handcuffing a whole bunch of black kids who may mostly have been bystanders. One officer has been placed on leave after a YouTube Video showed him throwing a 15-year-old girl to the ground, pulling his gun on two male youths who approached, then pushing the girl's face into the grass and kneeling on her back after some unknown provocation -- probably being mouthy and not one of the white kids who "belonged" in the neighborhood. Happily, for a change, nobody's dead or even shot, so there's that.

Officers were called to the a local community pool around 7: 15 p.m. local time to respond to a “disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave,” the McKinney Police Department said in a post on its Facebook page. Other calls also advised that the teens were “actively fighting,” police said.

“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,” police said.

The video was taken by Brandon Brooks, 15, and begins shortly after the fight had broken up and people were leaving the area; in his introduction to the video, Brooks wrote that the "cops just started putting everyone on the ground and in handcuffs for no reason. This kind of force is uncalled for especially on children and innocent bystanders."

The video begins with an impressive shot of one of the cops doing a barrel roll on the ground, either because he'd tripped or because he was just really excited to show off his sick moves; the same cop seems to be doing most of the shouting and trying to get people to leave the area, except for the kids who need to sit down and get handcuffed. It's not at all clear why he grabs the girl in the swimsuit and throws her to the ground, but he probably had an excellent reason, which commenters at The Blaze and the Daily Caller will explain justifies a cop manhandling a 15-year-old girl and kneeing her in the back. For one thing, why did her family let her go out dressed like that? He'll also no doubt be praised for his great restraint in not immediately shooting the two young men who approached him as he was pushing the girl's face toward the ground. No doubt a Republican presidential candidate will blame it all on fatherlessness. 

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Brooks told BuzzFeed that many students from outside the neighborhood had arrived with guest passes for an end-of-school pool party, and that some uninvited kids had jumped over the fence at the private community pool.

“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.

BuzzFeed reports that other teens who had witnessed the kerfuffle said:

[P]olice 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.”

Well, fine, the media would have to go and make it a racial thing, just because of some mistaken assumptions about socioeconomic class, wouldn't they? How did the teens know the comments were about race? Maybe the adults just assumed the kids lived in Section 8 housing because they had cell phones and a shopping cart full of crab legs , as the poors usually do.

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Brooks told BuzzFeed that the cops only went after certain individuals, for some reason:

“Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,” he said. “[The cop] didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”

And who's to say he wasn't invisible? As we know from studies by S. Lee and J. Kirby, mutant superpowers often emerge during adolescence, at times of great stress.

Ultimately, there was only one arrest made, of an adult male for "interference with the duties of a police officer and evading arrest,” and all the teens who had been handcuffed, including the 15-year-old girl who'd been thrown to the ground, were released without charges to their parents at the scene. Apparently, only one white kid ended up being handcuffed, a 14-year-old girl, Grace Stone, who says she was cuffed when she attempted when she tried to explain to officers that the fight had started after the white adults' racist comments. Stone was not arrested, but was also not told why she was being handcuffed; after about 25 minutes, she was released to her father, who said the cops wouldn't answer his questions about why his daughter was in handcuffs. Silly man: cops ask questions, they don't have to answer them.

At a press conference Sunday, McKinley Chief of Police Greg Conley said that the officer was placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated:

"Several concerns about the conduct of one of the officers at the scene have been raised," Conley said. "The McKinney Police Department is committed to treating all persons fairly under the law. We are committed to preserving the peace and safety of our community for all our citizens."

Also too, by Sunday afternoon somebody had put up a homemade sign at the pool saying "Thankyou [sic] McKinney PD for keeping us safe."

Yr Wonkette has not determined whether anyone has set up a GoFundMe drive on the police officer's behalf, but we're sure that's the next mandatory step in the process, to be followed by Sean Hannity saying something asinine.

Update/Correction: Most early reporting on the McKinney story gave the age of the girl thrown to the ground by the cop, Cpl. Eric Casebolt, as 14;the girl, Dajerria Becton, is actually 15. We've updated the story with her correct age.

[ BuzzFeed / NBC News / WFAA ]