Local Editor
A new incident had surfaced amidst the wave of police brutality and racism; hundreds marched through the Dallas-area city of McKinney on Monday calling for the firing of a police officer seen in a video throwing a black teenage girl to the ground and pointing his pistol at other African-American youths at a public pool disturbance.
McKinney Police Corporal Eric Casebolt had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of how he responded to the disturbance on Friday in the city about 30 miles north of Dallas, an incident that had raised fresh questions about racial bias in US policing.
Casebolt, who is white, is seen shouting obscenities at black youths in a multiracial crowd, shoving a black teenage girl, briefly pointing his gun at African-American youths and throwing the girl in her bathing suit, who is black, to the ground, burying his knees in her back.
“We are demanding that the officer be fired and be charged with assaulting the youth,” said Dominique Alexander, the president of the Next Generation Action Network, which helped organize the rally.
About 800 people took part in the peaceful rally, carrying signs demanding an end to police brutality and calling for police accountability.
Further, the incident came after a string of cases over the past year fueled waves of protests across the United States over what civil rights activists said was law enforcement’s unjustified use of force, often lethal, against minority groups.
The seven-minute video, viewed more than 7 million times on YouTube as of Monday, shows officers responding to the incident, which police said started when scores of youths at a community pool and refused requests to leave.
Accordingly, civil rights leaders met McKinney officials on Monday and told reporters they saw the officer’s actions as being racially motivated. They also said they wanted a US Justice Department probe.
Source: Alahednews
