Was Eric Casebolt Cop Who Pulled Gun, Slammed Teen In Bikini To Ground — Then Put Video On YouTube?
The police officer shown in a viral video uploaded Saturday violently wrestling a 14-year-old girl in a bikini to the ground by her hair then sitting on her — then pulling his gun on two other teens who approached him to protest — was named as McKinney, Texas Corporal Eric Casebolt.
The identification was made public by a reporter for KDFW-TV in Dallas. According to the reporter, Zahid Arab, Casebolt has been placed on leave.
But on Sunday, new apparent revelations emerged that Casebolt may have actually viewed the video of himself attacking the unarmed, bikini-clad teen — a video that can be viewed on this page, above — and been so proud of himself that he uploaded it to his own YouTube channel, which as of Sunday evening could still be accessed at this link.
That unsettling possibility has not been confirmed. But the news blog Heavy.com reported that Casebolt had indeed uploaded the video under the heading “police training,” noticing that the username of Casebolt’s now-deleted Twitter account, “decase73,” is the same user name as the YouTube channel where the “police training” video was uploaded.
The “police training” playlist on the alleged Casebolt YouTube account also includes several other videos that appear approving of police violence.
“The playlist includes dashcam footage of a brawl involving Arizona police, a video of the Milwaukee police chief talking about the Tony Robinson case called ‘Chief Tells the Truth Black People Don’t Want to Hear’ and one titled ‘Man Sucker-Punches Cop Gets Kicked in the Face,’ the Heavy site reported.
The incident took place on Friday, June 5, according to a statement by the McKinney police, who said its officers were responding to a “disturbance” involving juveniles who “do not live in the area or have permission to be there.”
Reportedly, there were about 70 teens attending a pool party at the location. While the group consisted of teens of various ethnicities, the 15-year-old who uploaded the video said that police harassed only the African-American teens and others with darkly colored skin.
“Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,” said Brandon Brooks, who is white. “[The cop] didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”
Another white teen, 14-year-old Grace Stone, told the site BuzzFeed that she was placed in handcuffs by Casebolt, but only after she asked officers to explain what had happened to justify their rough treatment of the partygoers.
Stone said that the “disturbance” began when local white adults made racist remarks at the group of partygoers.
Eric Casebolt has not issued a public comment on the allegations, or to explain his actions as seen in the video.
[Image: Youtube Screen Grab]
