The McKinney, Texas cop, Eric Casebolt, that was shown in a video throwing a young teenaged girl to the ground resigned from his post as a corporal on June 9, 2015.
“Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support his actions. He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident,” said Police Chief Greg Conley during the press conference that declared Casebolt was resigning.
The incident occurred in the Craig Ranch neighborhood in McKinney during a party, hosted by Tatyana Rhodes. Rhodes claimed that an altercation broke out between two white women and a few African-American teens. According to Rhodes, the white women told the teens they should “go back to their Section 8 homes.”
Rhodes said, “Everything could’ve been solved way better than what it was. There were other officers that were actually nice to people.”
Brandon Brooks, the 15-year-old white teenager who recorded the viral video, believes that race was definitely a factor in how the police responded.
The chaotic video shows Casebolt chasing after unarmed teens with a gun. It also shows him aggressively pinning down an unarmed teenaged girl.
“I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening. You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kinda like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down,” he said.
Brooks explained a similar story to Rhodes about how a fight broke out, but he said that Casebolt was going after teens that were not involved in the altercation.
The girl in the video who was pinned down, Dajerria Becton, said, “He grabbed me, twisted my arm on my back and shoved me in the grass and started pulling the back of my braids. I was telling him to get off me because my back was hurting bad.”
Becton was not charged.
“I watched the video of what happened and it was so chaotic. I think the police could have definitely handled it better,” said sophomore Olivia Zito.
Although those two stories were similar, Benet Embry, a black resident at Craig Ranch, told a different account.
“Let me reiterate, the neighbors or the neighborhood did not call the police because this was an African-American party or whatever the situation is. This was not a racially motivated event — at all. This whole thing is being blown completely out of proportion,” said Embry.
He claimed that a group of African-American teenagers came to the community pool, which was against Craig Ranch’s rule of only bringing two guests.
The group shouted to let them in from outside the gate. Embry said that some of the teens hopped the fence and when security was unable to stop all of them, he called the police.
An anonymous student said, “I agree with what Benet Embry said about this not being racially motivated. But then again, there does seem to be two different stories going around.”
Now that Casebolt has resigned, Conley says that it is too early to say whether or not he will face chargers.
What do you think should happen to Eric Casebolt?