NAACP seeks US probe of McKinney police after pool party response
Updated: The NAACP is asking the U.S. Justice Department to review procedures used by the McKinney, Texas, police force as a result of an officer’s response Friday to a call about a disturbance at a swimming pool.
The officer, David Eric Casebolt, was recorded on video forcing a teen girl to the ground and pointing his gun at others. Casebolt is white, and the teens in the video were black. The video has drawn protests in McKinney and the video, recorded by a 15-year-old boy who attended the party, has been viewed more than 10.8 million times on YouTube. Casebolt was placed on administrative leave and he voluntarily resigned on Tuesday, report the New York Times, the Associated Press, Courthouse News Service and the Dallas Morning News Crime Blog.
McKinney police chief Greg Conley told reporters that Casebolt’s actions were indefensible. “He came into the call out of control and as the video shows was out of control during the incident,” Conley said. “I had 12 officers on scene and 11 of them performed according to their training and they did an excellent job.”
Casebolt could still face criminal charges, Conley said.
A lawyer for Casebolt, Jane Bishkin, told reporters her client was under a great deal of stress that day because of two prior calls involving a suicide and attempted suicide, the New York Times reports.
The incident occurred at a community owned, admission-restricted pool in the Craig Ranch subdivision in McKinney, which is north of Dallas. Some black teens refused entrance to the pool reportedly jumped the fence, while a white resident told a teen to “go back to your Section 8 housing.”
The taunt refers to a federally funded subsidized housing program that has been the subject of court cases alleging racial segregation in its administration. A 2008 suit against McKinney claimed the town restricted Section 8 housing to primarily black neighborhoods. The suit settled in 2012 with a consent decree, according to the New York Times.
Another case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court alleges the Texas Housing Authority assigned nearly all the Section 8 housing credits more often to black rather than white neighborhoods in the Dallas area, according to an opinion column published by The Hill.
At issue in the case is whether discrimination claims brought under the Fair Housing Act can be based on proof of disparate impact rather than intentional discrimination.
Story updated on June 11 to add comment from Casebolt’s lawyer.
