Hundreds march as Texan pool party arrest video goes viral

Hundreds of people in the Texan suburb of McKinney took to the streets to call for sharp action against the police involved in the arrest of a number of teenagers following an incident at a pool party last week. The calls come after a video of a 14-year-old African-American girl being thrown to the ground and pushed on her face by a white officer went viral.

The officer, named locally as Eric Casebolt, is seen throwing the girl and putting his knee into her back, before pulling a gun when two men rush forward. The girl, who is seen struggling in her bikini and crying for her mother, was released to her parents after being detained.

The video is the latest in a string of incidents showing US police officers using what appears to be excessive force against African Americans.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the Police Department said officers arrived at the pool at around 7:15pm on Friday following reports to a call about 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 incident took place in the mostly middle-class suburb of McKinney, home to around 150,000 people and deep racial and economic divisions.

A 2009 article in US magazine The Atlantic detailed how the borough was forced to settle a lawsuit alleging that that it was blocking the development of affordable housing for tenants with so-called ‘Section 8’ vouchers in the more affluent western areas of the city. According to the most recent census, the city is still starkly divided along racial lines. The incident took place in the west side of the city at a community pool to celebrate the last day of school.

Teenagers at the party told Buzzfeed a fight broke out at the party after adults made racist comments towards the children, telling them to get out of the area, and go home to their ‘Section 8 housing’.

A teenager called Tatiana, who said she was involved in the initial incident that sparked the fight, posted a video on YouTube saying a white woman told here “You need to go back to where you’re from” before physically attacking her.

Protests started on Monday evening, with a diverse group of people gathering at the elementary school waving signs reading “Don’t tread on me or my kids” and “Stop Police Brutality.” Authorities say around 800 people marched through the town, to the scene of the public swimming pool where the arrests took place.

Brandon Books, the 15-year-old who shot the original video says he was one of the few white teenagers at the party, and was not confronted. He told a local TV station:

“You can see the part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kind of skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to sit down.”