Protests Arise Over Police Assault of Black Teens in McKinney, TX

On Monday night, people in McKinney, Texas took to the streets to protest Corporal Eric Casebolt, a police officer who brandished his gun at a pool party and waved it at some teens while sitting on the back of a black girl. Literally. As a result, he’s been suspended—but not fired. Noted, Texas.

As Jon Stewart covered on The Daily Show on Monday night—to add to other things one can’t do while black without being arrested, like cheer for your family at a graduation—a teen threw a pool party at her local swimming pool in her neighborhood where she had a pass. Then it was besieged by cops because others at the pool complained about the noise. Tatiana Rose, one of the teens who threw the party, says that some white adult pool attendees called them racial epithets and hit her in the face.

Brandon Brooks, a white teen at the party, filmed the now-infamous inappropriate behavior of Corporal Casebolt and remarked that he felt invisible because “Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,[The cop] didn’t even look at me.”

Here is the event’s account from 15-year-old Dajerria Becton, the teen who was slammed to the ground in the clip, via Fox 4 in Dallas-Fortworth, Texas.

“He told me to keep walking,” Dajerria Becton told Fox. “And I kept walking and then I’m guessing he thought we were saying rude stuff to him.”

“He grabbed me, twisted my arm on my back and shoved me in the grass and started pulling the back of my braids,” Becton said. “I was telling him to get off me because my back was hurting bad.”

I wish I was surprised.

On Monday night, in response to Casebolt’s racist display of unequal treatment of black children in bathing suits, thousands of people protested in McKinney, according to Think Progress. Holding signs reading “Those Kids were MY kids #blacklivesmatter,” both blacks and white walked down a large street to demonstrate, ‘Hey, integrating pools shouldn’t still be an American civil rights battle ground.’