Deep In The Heart of Texas

Eric Casebolt subdues the "threat" of unarmed 15 year-old girl

Is this truly 21st century America? Pinch me please because sometimes I really have to wonder.

In the wake of the shocking videotape of McKinney, Texas police corporal Eric Casebolt (pictured left) violently throwing 15 year-old Dajerria Becton (also pictured left, face down) to the ground and pulling a loaded handgun on two teenage boys who tried to come to her aid, national outrage is once again focused on the violent physical overreaction of a white American police officer in yet another confrontation with unarmed black citizens.

Kudos to Brandon Brooks, the 15 year-old teenager who filmed the incident. According to an article on ThinkProgress.org, Brooks observed, “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,” he said. However, he maintains, many of the kids who were handcuffed and told to get on the ground were ‘innocent bystanders.’"

So much already has been, and will be, said about this (latest) incident on mainstream and social media, as well as around water coolers, locker rooms and in homes around the country, that there's nothing I can add other than to say how profoundly shocked I am at the treatment of this child.

It was just last Friday June 5th that I blogged about chicanery in Texas, just hours before a local resident named Sean Toon called 911 in response to a confrontation that broke out at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool between 19 year-old Tatyana Rhodes, who was hosting a barbecue at the pool, and two local white women who allegedly began yelling racial slurs at the guests.

According to reports, the women were upset that a large number of young people of color (including Hispanics and people of Arab descent) had crashed the poolside party by hopping over the fences and began directing derogatory racial slurs at some of the young attendees.

Tracey Carver-Albritton

When Rhodes intervened and confronted the two woman about their words, a woman she identified in a video interview as "Kate" slapped her in the face before the other woman, tentatively identified on Twitter as a Bank of America employee named Tracey Carver-Allbritton (pictured left); physically began attacking Rhodes.

As you likely know by now, it all unraveled from there before corporal Eric Casebolt arrived on the scene; according to an article on Heavy.com, Casebolt was one of a group of officers named in a 2008 federal lawsuit "for racial profiling, harassment, failure to render aid and sexual assault." after he yanked down the pants of a black motorist who'd been stopped at the side of a road and began shining a flash light at his anus to search for contraband. (I guess that's what he was searching for anyway...)

So he does have a documented history of excessive physical confrontation with people of color as a police officer.

According to former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes who reviewed the widely-circulated video of the incident outside the pool in McKinney, in an interview with CNN said Casebolt was, “...out of control. He clearly has no self-discipline. He lost control of his temper. Nothing good can happen at that point. Thankfully he didn’t shoot somebody,”

So for the first time in the brief history of this humble blog, we have a three-way tie for this week's George Lincoln Rockwell Award; which recognizes those distinguished individuals who best emulate the divisive philosophy of the founder of the American Nazi Party.

Corporal Eric Casebolt, the woman identified as "Kate" who slapped Tayana Rhodes, and Tracey Carver-Allbritton who is seen on video joining "Kate" in physically attacking the teenager, will all share in this week's "Rockwell".

The disturbing nature of the incident at the community pool in McKinney, Texas has attracted so much media attention that it seems to have overshadowed the news that former North Charleston South Carolina police officer Michael Slager was indicted on murder charges earlier today by a grand jury after cell phone video of him shooting unarmed Walter Scott in the back after fleeing a traffic stop on foot.

No trial date has been announced and it's obviously a long way before Slager appears in court, but it's important to note the significance of a white police officer facing murder charges for the unjustified use of deadly force to kill an unarmed African-American man in this nation; a country that as of now, does not actually keep accurate records of the number of people killed by police each year.

Eric Casebolt has been placed on leave while the McKinney Police Department conducts an investigation, but time will tell if he actually faces charges for his lapse in professional behavior.

Want to weigh in? Click this link to a petition calling for Casebolt to be fired posted on the ColorOfChange.org Website.

But for now he, "Kate" and Tracey Carver-Allbritton give new meaning to the lyrics, "Deep in the Heart of Texas."