A Texas police officer who drew his gun on unarmed teenagers while responding to a disturbance at a pool and threw a bikini-clad teen girl to the ground has been placed on administrative leave, officials said Sunday.
The incident occurred Friday night in McKinney, Texas, about 30 miles north of Dallas, when police were called to a private community pool where a large crowd had gathered.
In a video taken by a teenage bystander and posted to YouTube, the white officer, later identified by local media as Eric Casebolt, can be seen shouting obscenities and ordering some black teens to lie on the ground while telling others to disperse. Casebolt is then seen grabbing the back of the girl's head, throwing her to the ground and pushing her face down, then pulling his gun on a pair of black teenagers who appeared to be coming to her aid.
"This video has raised concerns that are being investigated," the McKinney Police Departmentsaid in a statement.
According to police, a total of 12 officers responded to the call:
Police said they later learned of the footage, which prompted the investigation.
The girl, 15-year-old Dajerria Becton, was not charged and released to her parents, McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley said at a press conference Sunday afternoon.
“He grabbed me, twisted my arm on my back and shoved me in the grass and started pulling the back of my braids,” Becton told KDFW-TV. “I was telling him to get off me because my back was hurting bad."
Brandon Brooks, the 15-year-old who shot the video, told BuzzFeed that the party was an "end-of-school celebration" that some students had crashed.
“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,” Brooks, who is white, told the website.
The video quickly sparked outrage on social media, as many drew comparisons to recent high-profile cases of police bias in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
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