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David Mack: Texas Police Officer Suspended After Pulling Weapon On Teens During Pool Party
The lies
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.
Then the truth emerged
However, video later emerged of one officer aggressively handcuffing and detaining teens who described themselves as bystanders, before wrestling a girl in a bathing suit to the ground and drawing his weapon on others who came to her aid. Brooks, the 15-year-old who shot the YouTube video, told BuzzFeed News many students had arrived at the end-of-school celebration at the pool on guest passes. “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. Grace Stone, a white 14-year-old, told BuzzFeed News that when she and her friends objected to the racist comments about public housing an adult woman then became violent. When police arrived on scene, teens began fleeing. That’s when Brooks began his recording. “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.”
More here
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https://twitter.com/daniecal/status/607607624792571904
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https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/607603255145676800
https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/607603375253757952
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The white parents and white people who do this to Black children, who do this to Black people – picking up the phone and calling the cops because a Black person or Black people are in the neighborhood. Who look at a Black body and see a threat instead of a child or a human being, YOU are complicit. If the cop had killed a child today, YOU are complicit. Shame on YOU.
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https://twitter.com/WillBrianna/status/607604162684186624
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/607607705981718528
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https://twitter.com/sherifffruitfly/status/607603720512106496
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https://twitter.com/jkfecke/status/607604871592673280
https://twitter.com/GlennF/status/607603758621540352
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https://twitter.com/FeministaJones/status/607589889484320768
https://twitter.com/FeministaJones/status/607601652170776576
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https://twitter.com/DeeRene_/status/607590020069924864
https://twitter.com/FeministaJones/status/607590199384678401
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https://twitter.com/rieVAMPED/status/607592796166471681
https://twitter.com/Rex4711/status/607579797175336961
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https://twitter.com/daniecal/status/607579502894444544
https://twitter.com/fivefifths/status/607575102641815552
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https://twitter.com/FeministaJones/status/607592930895732736
https://twitter.com/elonjames/status/607616292686819328
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https://twitter.com/dyrbert/status/607579449761005568
https://twitter.com/elonjames/status/607618066911006720
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The Obama Diary 
1st!
Bringing carolyn’s comment over:
carolyn
June 7, 2015 at 2:55 pm
McKinney Texas is what I would call a plantation town. It is in East Texas, which did contain a number of cotton plantations, and that mentality has maintained through the years. My sister and I traveled this part of the state for a week two summers so she could do some genealogical research. It is spooky, and I am a mature white woman. There are still crossburnings and lynchings in this part of the state…..not publicized, but my AA students have told me about them, and, having been there, I believe them. McKinney was a wealthy cotton town, and that legacy remains.
wow Carolyn. Still? That is crazy nuts! The people who have power there (and I gotta assume they’re white) must think they are in their own world and above the law.
Yes, they are in their own world and time and time again the law has allowed them to be above the law.
Yes, still. One of my students told me of going to visit his aunt, they looked down the road they thought they’d take, and saw a cross burning a ways down the road. They quick turned around and went a different way. They told me, Prof…..don’t EVER go to east Texas! I don’t plan ever to go back. However, my sister and I visited because our maternal grandmother was born in east Texas…..about fifty miles southeast of McKinney, at a crossroads called Diana. Her family had had a cotton plantation, but been wiped out in the Civil War, and the entire area was economically destroyed. This is not a pleasant place to visit……secretive, closed, suspicious……
People who visit McKinney talk about what a “beautiful” town it is…..it has a candy box cute core with Victorian cottages and gardens…..but this event does not surprise me at all.
As a New Englander/Californian, what disgusted me the most when I moved to Oklahoma, was the “southern charm” of white women who would say the most disgusting things about people of color in the most syrupy tones…….just nauseating. Frankly, when people talk about “Southern charm” all I hear is these rightwing “Christian” women and their derogatory remarks cloaked in a drawl. Deliver me!
McKinney is not in East Texas. It is in North Texas.
McKinney is in North Texas.
This hit hard. They are children. Children! But some use the vile excuse of the color of their skin to see them as threats, to spew racist comments at them, and treat them worse than animals.
There is a sickness in this country and Black people are suffering and being killed because of it.
Some days, it’s too much. It’s just too much.
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/607607705981718528
Bringing this over…
Good Afternoon TODVille!
Always a great pleasure to follow POTUS on his overseas trips.s Such refreshing air and warm welcome. Always.
I continue to be very appreciative of TOD for allowing a recap of the day’s events when one cannot follow them live.
The G7 is perfect break from the sadness of VPOTUS’s loss, the passing of his son, and the emotions of yesterday’s service. However, I must confess that the best remedy for me was to watch (again) the 2012 debate between VP Joe Biden and one of the Young Guns, Paul Lying Ryan. I savored it twice last night. Not only did the Social-Security-killer, the fierce-Medicaid/Medicare-privatization defender, Paul L. Ryan, look like a school boy coming from a prep school (i.e. Exeter or Kent),he was fervently taking notes from Master Foreign Policy Biden while drinking water constantly from the first few minutes of the debate. Seeing how VP Biden beat the 47%-aspiring-VP ticket was therapeutic.
Have a wonderful rest of the day.
Jesus.
What’s encouraging is that because of social media, this is no longer hidden. I don’t think for a minute that the incidences of police brutality have increased significantly. But now you have folks with smart phones recording everything. It’s no longer a dirty secret, but out for the world to see. We can only hope that light is a disinfectant, and that more and more white folks get sick of what’s being done in their name.
white folks get sick of what’s being done in their name.
***************
It seems to me that no matter what situation occurs there are white folks that do not want to see what is right there before their eyes…that to see clearly means that they have to change their belief systems……
the more facts and info that is given…the more they double down on their hatred and bigotry…
In Ferguson…the interim chief is challenging the findings of the DOJ…is just one example….
in the above film all the white folks standing around…not one of them seem to object to how the children were being treated…the cops who came on the scene…not one tried to restrain that cop who kneeled on the back of that young girl…THIS IS THE PROBLEM….WHITE FOLKS HAVE TO STAND UP….
Dr King believed that there were decent white folks who would not stand for the injustice of black men and women….i pray that he is right
THIS…THIS….THIS.
Thank you for this commentary, PF.
I guess these people really want their country back.
Not “theirs” to get back…they just can’t handle that this country belongs to ALL OF US. Or is SUPPOSED to!
They don’t get that its not theirs to get back.
More than true.
Although this has been going on for centuries, I do believe what we witness today is especially virulent because it does feel like backlash.
thx VC! I always get a kick out of what’s happening at the Interior – Jewell always seems like she’s got a plan and lots of things happening that help people.
You’re very welcome, Alice, my dear! One of the things that I particularly like about @Interior is that they are a department that is always busy, and in their weekly recap they are never shy to mention President Obama and what he’s been doing that impacts their programme.
What a sad story. Every time a Black kid, a minority teenager is assaulted, I hope and pray s/he is the last one. But the police always remind us that the status quo prevails. It’s so scary.
This is just brutal, horrific. How many more days/months/years/decades of this kind of violation of human rights? Day after day after day. It’s so rampant in so many parts of our country. Crazy, out-of-control police responding to racist freaks who are itching for their own special brand of “justice.” It’s deeply embedded in our sick culture, it’s institutional. It makes me ill.
Meta, you speak for both of us here.
In addition, I’m wondering why law enforcement is not getting the message even with all the recent publicity that points out their actions are no longer in the dark. Don’t they care?
I just think they’re so steeped in their own white privilege, they don’t see the problem. They don’t think it applies to them. They don’t question their tactics, their values. They’r acting from their gut and they don’t think they’re going to get caught.
Wasn’t there a President not too long ago that acted on his gut?
Well, they have a very hate-filled ‘gut’!
I kept waiting for the white guy who was walking around with the one cop to say a restraining word or make a deterring gesture. Sigh. These videos/events scare me…..really, really scare me!
the brief walk I took did not help my mood – I need to walk further and play some music to calm me down;
I don’t want to be a vigilante;
but that guy (blue jean shorts with a cream shirt) who is working with the police needs to be identified and asked WHY he was doing what was captured;
I can’t believe that there are a few moments in the tape where he has the girl’s head in between his legs like he is wrangling an animal;
Very interesting that you said you needed some music to calm you down. Dick Gregory years ago was asked why do black men walk around with boom boxes on their shoulders with the music blasting in their ears. Dick Gregory responded by saying “the music drowns out the pain that one endures for being a black man in this society.”
This…This….THIS.
I’m playing some music now to try and get my head on straight because it’s too goddamned much.
Speak it! This is the TRUTH!
This story was the first thing I saw on the news when I turned it on today. And another cop with a gun put on “administrative leave.” The weapon most needed in this country is the video camera. Even then …
The one thing about being black is that you are reminded of it in the most cruelest of ways.
I PLACE ALOT OF BLAME FOR INCREASED VIOLENCE IN THIS COUNTRY ON THE MEDIA’S ‘FEAR MONGERING’….FEAR IS OUR WORST ENEMY AND IT CAUSES INCREASED CHAOS. POLICE DEPTS. ARE ON EDGE…TEMPERS ARE SHORT…REACTIONS ARE WRONG AND RACISM OF ALL KINDS IS RAMPANT. CITIZENS IN THIS COUNTRY HAVE NOT RESPECTED OUR PRESIDENT…THEY HAVE MADE HIM A PUBLIC TARGET FOR MOCKERY AND ‘BLACK MOCKERY’ AT THAT. WE HAVE NOTHING TO BE PROUD OF HERE BECAUSE THERE IS A PERVERSE EVIL HOVERING OVER OUR SOCIETY…AND I PRAY OFTEN. AS THE PRIEST STATED AT BEAU’S FUNERAL…WE LOOK TO THE ARRIVAL OF OUR BLESSED HOPE…TILL THAT TIME ‘CHAOS’ APPEARS TO BE THE PRACTICE OF THE DAY…STAY STRONG AND PRAY!
FEAR IS OUR WORST ENEMY AND IT CAUSES INCREASED CHAOS..CITIZENS IN THIS COUNTRY HAVE NOT RESPECTED OUR PRESIDENT…THEY HAVE MADE HIM A PUBLIC TARGET FOR MOCKERY AND ‘BLACK MOCKERY’ AT THAT.
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THISSSSSSSSSSSS…
Just told T about McKinney. She just shook her head in disgust. She’s one white person who gets it.
There is a video in the comments that shows the two white women attacking one of the children. I read that one of them tell the kids to go back to their Section 8 housing ?
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/dallas-cop-suspended-after-video-surfaces-showing-him-shoving-and-wrestling-black-teen-girl-at-pool-party/comments/#disqus
Just after the 3 min mark the crazy cop pulls the girl out of a crowd and throws her on the ground
https://twitter.com/Our4thEstate/status/607641272145223680
#TruthAndReconciliation … our only path out of the legacy of genocide, slavery, and unbridled brutality toward POC.
fourteen. She’s FOURTEEN Bob. She’s a child. This kind of trauma stays in your psyche. SMDH
Yes, Alice. She will live with it for the remainder of her life. And, her only solace is that he didn’t kill or paralyze her.
yes! I was thinking the same thing watching him push his fat old knee into her little body – crap you’re going to snap her spine! stop!
Nerdy – thanks for bringing this to light. On another note but still in Texas – how’s Austin? Are things back to normal after the storm? I remember that it was pretty scary.
These tweets encapsulate the problem.
MSM wake up!!!
https://twitter.com/GlennF/status/607620581723234306
And…
More…
Sorry, but the MSM *is* awake and owned by the GOP, which loves cops and doesn’t give much of a damn about civil rights.
Consumers of MSM need to ask these plutocrat-proppers, war-mongering zealots “What does terrorism on the streets of America look like?”
https://twitter.com/Our4thEstate/status/607652913712750592
bbl …
On a quick break.
After the Freddie Grey murder, I started researching body cameras to gift to the young folks in my family; didn’t order them because I didn’t want to give in to paranoia. Tonight, I’m going to pull up my research — this time, I’m placing an order. Pisses me off that, just like African American veterans of WWII, I gave 21 years of my life in service to a country that does not see nor treat me and mine as full citizens — entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
This is heartwrenching. There is no excuse for this. And the media talks about the terror of ISIL. This is real terrorism. I almost feel hopeless as a white person that other white people feel privileged enough to do this to other American citizens. I do blame the media and the Republicans, they feel they can treat out President this way and not get called out by anyone. I have to walk away for awhile and do some meditating. This has to change. Where do I start.
MAY GOD DEEPLY BLESS AND COMFORT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM…:)
I read this on Gawker
“According to a police statement posted to Facebook, McKinney, Texas police responded on Friday evening to a “disturbance” call regarding a group of teenagers who “do not live in the area or have permission to be there.””
Under what rules to people need “permission” to be in a city/town/whatever in the great Land of the Free? Who grants this “permission”. The open racism is astounding – like the young lad pulled over on his bicycle because someone thought he “didn’t live around here”.
This is apartheid by stealth – no wonder the GOP never wanted sanctions against South Africa. Would the President or his children be ejected in this fashion from Texas swimming pools? Will the media attack the President if he does/does not comment on what is happening in his great country. That lass is of an age with the President’s children.
I don’t know the specifics, but Don mentioned that he lives in a subdivision that has a community pool for residents of that subdivision. I’ve never lived in the newer “planned” communities, but I think it’s similar to condos that have monthly “homeowner association” (HOA) fees for maintenance of common area (landscaping, lighting, parking, recreation areas, etc.).
Unless a community pool is operated by the local government or YMCA, it’s open only to residents (and their guests).
Don would have accurate info on this.
Sad world – people locking themselves in – and trying to keep the world out. They should put up barb wire fences & turn themselves into millionaires prisons.
Watched NBC Nightly News tonight……had a report on the McKinney horror…..showed very clear pictures of the policeman pulling the girl around…..that was followed by a policeman beating a man in Orlando. Graphics are very telling.
Also, a several minute report on the G7 summit…..Chris Jansing, the White House correspondent, does a much better job than ole Chuck Todd did. Fair, objective, good graphics again……and nothing about the president asking the group to wave and Merkel’s refusal.
IS THERE ANY HOPE!!!!!!
#HDP
https://twitter.com/loves_louboutin/status/607665794089123841
what an achievement by the opposition!
unless erdogan decides to resort to underground oppression using the instruments of the state, this signals a seismic change!
Lots of external pressure on him to not undermine Turkey’s democracy, gclinda, not the least of which is Turkey’s NATO membership. We’ll see.
For now, these folk are not only the hope of Turkey, but of an eventually stable, democratic, pluralistic Middle East ….
https://twitter.com/JosefMaxmuri/status/607646142881529858
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/07/texas-police-investigation-seizing-phone-pepper-spraying-innocent-bystander.html
I can’t get this video out of my mind – I am tired of these incidents occurring almost every day.
it has come to the point whereby I keep wondering to myself: which community will be sharing video of police brutality today?
given the time difference between here and Germany, I am wondering if PBO has already been shown this tape or if it will instead be among the first things he sees when he gets his daily briefing;
it occurred to me that the ages of some of these kids (especially the girl who the policeman used as a “body stool” and that adult neighbor put between his legs) is in the same age group as the First Kids.
“it occurred to me that the ages of some of these kids (especially the girl who the policeman used as a “body stool” and that adult neighbor put between his legs) is in the same age group as the First Kids.”
I’m sure its occurring to many people linda – and no doubt the media will attack the President for commenting/not commenting – as they do.
either way, PBO can’t win
I was pretty sure I posted something here…… 🙂
Free my comment please. I’m stuck!
You’re free, DF. 🙂
So where are all the anti-“Police State” Libertarians, Dudebros, OWS shills, etc., on all this police brutality to unarmed Black children?!?
good question hf.
More about the police officer in the pool video. h/t BJ
http://heavy.com/news/2015/06/eric-casebolt-mckinney-texas-police-officer-cop-suspended-black-teens-pool-party-arrest-video-leave-investigation-photo-gun-background-name/
Exactly. The arrogance of knowing that the system is all rigged up for him regardless of whatever happens.
Good morning amk 🙂
If you scroll up a bit you’ll see my response to Deray’s comment.
The picture of cops ‘standing guard’ over the violent and armed biker killers couldn’t be any starker.
YUP!
Freedom ….
The police in Waco showed the biker gangsters more respect and courtesy then those cops did those black kids. No I do not trust any black person, man, woman, child around any cops.
Sorry to say that but it is how I feel.
The response from the residents in Texas is so damn disgusting. But, it reinforces what I have long suspected: no black person, or “different” person is safe in this country. We are not cared about, respected, or valued. As with our slave ancestors we will succeed by the grace of God. We can never relax. We must remain vigilant. Our children will be exposed to virulent racists at schools, in parks, in stores, at the beach, wherever they offend a white person. They can never, eve be children. We can never ever breathe freely.
This is the legacy that I leave to my sons and grandson: Be as careful as we had to be from slavery through the 60’s. Dr. King’s dream is still to be realized. We are still not free. Just ask President Obama.
That could easily have been Malia or Sasha in Texas, treated like an animal. Their name could not protect them: they are black. I saw my grandson who has adperger’s being handcuffed or shot, because he is black with asperger’s. That’s a sure death sentence if he ever encounters the wrong cop, black or white, at the wron time. All they will see is a black man/child behaving strangely. Bullets justified. Full stop.
That’s what black and brown people live with daily. We have even learned t0 Hate ourselves.
I am ranting and raving because everything feels so hopeless. We take one step forward, and the next day we’ve taken fifty steps backwards.
Why were we created to be hated?
I
OHHHH {{{{{{{{{{{{{EVE)))))))))))))))
“Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times….
Ever since I’d met him, Browder had been telling me stories about having been abused by officers and inmates on Rikers. The stories were disturbing, but I did not fully appreciate what he had experienced until this past April when I obtained surveillance footage of an officer assaulting him and of a large group of inmates pummeling and kicking him. I sat next to Kalief while he watched these videos for the first time. Afterward, we discussed whether they should be published on The New Yorker’s Web site. I told him that it was his decision. He said to put them online…”
No words.
Oh, God, that poor young man, wrongly sent to that horrible place and tortured for years. It’s beyond imaginable that there was no one anywhere who could help him.
For Kalief
This is sick. That was outright child abuse and that man/cop needs to be locked up. He not only pulls a gun on children but what he does to that poor terrified girl is beyond criminal. I don’t even know what to say that’s civilized anymore about the police in our country.
Totally agree. So sick about it!
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/607714134151581696
WTF?!?!? Does this “cop” think he’s auditioning for an ’80s action movie? This man is SICK.
More bullshit.
https://twitter.com/Our4thEstate/status/607717545278193664
Proper attribution – h/t amk!
I know this story was shared here before, but it’s updated somewhat here with neighbours standing with the mother in question. I’m sharing it now because a tweet raised the point that if a parent had treated the teen in the video the way the cop had, he/she would have been charged with child abuse.
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Local-moms-supporting-mother-arrested-after-son-misses-curfew-305749731.html
New post.
http://theobamadiary.com/2015/06/07/germany-the-presidents-day/
Horrible horrible horrible. White people allow this to happen again and again. Many of us encourage it, support it, justify it, ignore it, deny it, twist it, and benefit from it. I keep thinking about the police officer talking to the kids at the beginning, before this egomanical brute swoops in and assaults an innocent petite young woman, holding her down with his knee and pushing her face into the grass. The first cop was talking to kids, working it out, no violence, no problems, no mob — and then the terrorist arrives and takes charge and they all let him. What church do those big silent white men in shorts go to, what church to they sit in on Sundays that allows them to stand there over a wild, brutal violent cop mashing a young girl into the ground, just to dominate and punish and Show That He Rules The World? What would they do if someone laid a hand on their daughters? Pulled a gun on their sons for no reason? What fool would NOT run away from this terror? We let it be criminal to exist in space and time while black. White people created this and keep it going. I thank God every night that PBO is President, that he and his family are safe and he is Commander in Chief; and now, that there are cell phones with audio, so that it gets harder and harder for my people to lie and get away with it, and for people to deny, ignore, twist and justify. They still do, lots of them, but it’s way harder.
These bullies and psychos justify their brutality by actually believing that others are lesser than themselves. They’re incapable of seeing their own sickness and ugliness. I hope the parents of every one of those young victims of abuse can get good legal counsel and sue the city and the police department for excessive use of force and abuse. There are many of us who would gladly contribute to a fund for legal help. These sadists need push back and consequences or the abusive, racist, sadistic pattern will never end.
To all that think McKinney is in East Texas you are incorrect. It is in North Texas. People who live in East Texas had never heard of McKinney until this happened.