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The best thing that could be said about Police Cpl. Eric Casebolt, the McKinney police officer seen on video pulling his gun on and tackling teenagers at a pool party gone bad, is that he didn’t shoot anybody, according to Jahi Bakari, who said Casebolt hit his daughter during the incident.
“He pulled the gun out on teenagers. That’s the one thing I give him credit for: he didn’t pull the trigger,” he said. “If he had, this McKinney would be another Ferguson 100 times over.”
Parents, activists and community leaders gathered outside McKinney police headquarters Monday afternoon to call for Casebolt’s firing.
“I don’t like grown men touching my girls,” Bakari said. “This guy was just out of control. He should be drug-tested, then fired.”
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Cops were called to the pool in the Craig Ranch subdivision after a group of teenagers refused to leave the private pool after a fight, according to McKinney police.
Tatiana Rhodes, 19, said in YouTube video filmed after the incident that the fight started after a woman at the party called a black attendee “black fucker” and suggested that some of the black people at the party return to their Section 8 housing.
When police arrived, the teenagers scattered. The parents at the press conference said that was the right thing to do, that they would’ve run to, because Casebolt was “acting like a lunatic.”
Casebolt knocked over a 14-year-old, Dajerria Becton, and then pulled a gun when two male teenagers ran over, apparently to help Becton. Casebolt then pinned Becton to the ground with a knee in her back.
“He grabbed me, twisted my arm on my back and shoved me in the grass and started pulling the back of my braids,” Becton told KDFW. “I was telling him to get off me because my back was hurting bad.”
The incident was filmed by Brandon Brooks, who explained to NBC News why he started filming.
“When I started the video was right after all the kids who got put on the ground had gotten up and ran away. The cop was chasing after all those kids, just putting every black person he saw on the ground,” Brooks said.
Dominique Alexander, an activist with Next Generation Action Network, said Monday that Becton would not be giving any further interviews until she was able to get legal advice.
Casebolt has been placed on administrative leave as McKinney police investigate the incident.
