On Saturday, a 15-year-old named Brandon Brooks uploaded a YouTube video showing several white police officers chasing, threatening, handcuffing, and violently detaining a number of black teens outside a McKinney, Texas, community swimming pool. According to what Brooks and other witnesses told BuzzFeed, the incident began at an end-of-the-school-year pool party, where adults made racist comments to the black attendees, including telling them to return to “Section 8 [public] housing.” “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,” explained Brooks, who is white. Some kind of fight broke out, and the police were called.
In the seven-minute video, the cops sprint onto the scene, causing the kids to scatter. (“When the cops showed up everyone ran, including the people who didn’t do anything,” wrote Brooks on YouTube.) One particularly zealous officer can be seen ordering half a dozen boys onto the ground while menacing them with a nightstick. He also screams at a bunch of girls to “get your asses gone” before grabbing one them, yanking her by her hair, and slamming her into the sidewalk. When two of the girl’s male friends rush in to help her, the cop points his gun at them. He then returns to the girl (who is wearing only her swimsuit), wrestles her until she is lying face-down in the grass, and proceeds to dig his knees into her back for over a minute while continuing to yell at the obviously terrified teens.
Here’s the McKinney Police Department’s version of events, via their Facebook page:
On June 5, 2015 at approximately 7:15 p.m., officers from the McKinney Police Department responded to a disturbance at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool. The initial call came in as a disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave. McKinney Police received several additional calls related to this incident advising that juveniles were now actively fighting.
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.
McKinney Police later learned of a video that was taken at the scene by an unknown party. This video has raised concerns that are being investigated by the McKinney Police Department. At this time, one of the responding officers has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.
While the post does not specify which officer was suspended, you can probably guess which one it was.
