4:55 p.m. (CDT)
The white police officer seen in a cellphone video subduing a teenage black girl at a pool party is a former Texas state trooper who has taken cultural diversity training.
McKinney police haven’t identified the officer who pushed the bikini-clad girl to the ground on Friday and drew a gun on other black teens. However, local news media have identified the officer as David Eric Casebolt.
A record from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement shows the 41-year-old officer joined the police force in the Dallas suburb in August 2005. He earlier served almost two years as a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper.
Casebolt took eight hours of cultural diversity training at Collin County Community College in February 2009. He has also taken courses in racial profiling and use of force.
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2:45 p.m. (CDT)
The mayor of a Texas city where an officer was seen on video pushing a 15-year-old girl to the ground during a pool party says city leaders “take this matter very seriously.”
McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller made the comments to about 40 people who gathered for a previously scheduled city council meeting. Loughmiller said, “We really need to come together as a community.”
Nikki Perez, a black resident who attended the meeting but not the pool party, alleged police seemed to be targeting black teenagers over white ones. She criticized the officer for using profanity and drawing his gun at one point.
Authorities haven’t named the officer, who was placed on administrative leave.
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This story has been corrected to show the girl is 15 years old, not 14.
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2:25 p.m. (CDT)
The ACLU of Texas is asking police to release the entire incident report and a 911 call related to a pool party in which a McKinney officer pushed a 15-year-old girl to the ground and pointed his gun at other teens.
A statement the group sent Monday says the incident – seen on video – “appears to be a textbook case of overuse of force.” The statement adds that “in too many cities, there are two kinds of policing and we saw both in this incident: one serving and protecting the white community and one criminalizing and controlling communities of color.”
The officer has been placed on administrative leave. The ACLU of Texas also called on the McKinney Police Department to name the officer and release his disciplinary history.
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This story has been corrected to show the girl is 15 years old, not 14.
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12:05 a.m. (CDT)
A black man who says he saw an apparently white police officer restraining a black, bikini-clad teenage girl at a suburban Dallas community pool party says it wasn’t a racial incident.
Benét Embry, who watched the disturbance unfold in McKinney on Friday night, told The Associated Press on Monday that the officer was belligerent and profane, but that police were right to try “to defuse the situation.”
He characterized it as “a teenage party that got out of hand.”
Embry says about 130 kids, most of them black, turned up for the party. He says some of the partygoers jumped a fence to access the pool, causing a disturbance and sparking fights. He says only seven or eight of them were troublemakers.