Source: Tom Hahn / Getty
The now-infamous pool party attack by McKinney police officers, including Cpl. Eric Casebolt has shaken us all. And thankfully, we all got a chance to see the savagery because the video was recorded by 15-year-old, Brandon Brooks, who has now spoken out. “My heart did drop and I was scared that someone was going to get shot and possibly killed, so I knew I had to keep on filming like, ‘cause…I got really scared when he pulled out his gun,” said Brooks.
As he re-watched the video he filmed, Brooks said, “He’s just putting random black kids on the ground.”
Watch the video below:
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.” The McKinney Police Department posted on its Facebook page that the kids didn’t live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave. Other calls also advised that the teens were “actively fighting,” police said.
Miles Jai Thomas, a guest at the party told The Huffington Post that the gates were open to everyone. “Then he started making up rules to keep us out,” Thomas said of the neighborhood’s security guard. That same guard started to remove Black partygoers from the area.
Thomas’ retelling of the story is supported by that of the party’s host, Tatiana Rhodes, 19, who explained on a YouTube video that the event turned sour when a woman began hurling racial slurs at her friends.
Then a White woman at the pool started making racist comments, Thomas tells the news outlet, including “telling Black teens at the party to get used to the bars outside the pool because that’s all they were going to see,” the report says.
Police were called and what happened next was captured on a viral video that has reignited complaints about abusive behavior by White officers against Black youth — this time against boys and girls. In particular, a White officer was recorded aggressively tackling a female teen in a bathing suit, holding her face down to the ground, and drawing a weapon on the apparently peaceful teens.
That teen’s friend, Jahda Bakari has spoken out about the incident:
Bakari said she found out about the party via social media and through her friends, who had invited her. “It was a bunch of people at the pool. The only reason it seemed like a party is because everyone was together at first, but then later we separated out into our own thing. Everyone was happy, we just got out of school.”
