A white Texas police officer was shown on video drawing his gun and slamming a black, teenage girl in a bikini to the ground while responding to a call on Friday near a community pool in McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
A seven-minute video uploaded to YouTube on Saturday shows a McKinney police officer throwing a girl to the ground while holding her arm. When additional individuals approached the officer, he drew his gun and chased the individuals away, the video shows. He then forced the girl face down onto the ground and said, “On your face,” placed his knees on her back and handcuffed her.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the McKinney Police Department said that the officer involved was placed on administrative leave after police reviewed the video of the confrontation.
“This video has raised concerns that are being investigated by the McKinney Police Department,” the statement reads.
In the statement, the McKinney Police Department said that on Friday, officers 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,” the statement reads. “First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands.”
In a Saturday press conference, McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley confirmed to reporters that the officer who attempted to arrest the 14-year-old girl was placed on administrative leave. The girl was detained temporarily before being released, Conley said.
Officers made one arrest. A 19-year-old male was arrested for “interference with the duties of the peace officer and evading arrest,” according to Conley.
Conley said that he is not aware of any injuries and said that 12 police officers in total responded to the call at the community pool. He did not provide details about the officer placed on leave.
Witnesses at the community pool told Buzzfeed News that officers responded after a fight broke out between adults and teenagers at the pool:
Teens at the pool party told BuzzFeed News the police were called after a fight broke out between adults and youths at the pool after the adults made racist comments telling the black children to leave the area and return to “Section 8 [public] housing.”
Miles Jai Thomas, a 15-year-old who attended the pool party, told the Huffington Post that the fight began when a security guard at the community pool began removing “black partygoers” from the pool area.
A white woman at the pool started making racist comments, Thomas said, such as telling black teens at the party to get used to the bars outside the pool because that’s all they were going to see.
The fight then escalated, Thomas told the Huffington Post:
This is when, according to Thomas, a 19-year-old black woman told the belligerent white woman to stop fighting with the teenagers. The white woman called the black woman a “young bitch,” then walked up to her. After the young woman said her age out loud, the older woman punched her in the face. Another unidentified white woman jumped in as well before Thomas, who was recording the incident, and his friends went to break it up.
It was after this incident that the cops showed up and “started cursing and yelling at us,” Thomas said.
Watch the video uploaded to YouTube below:
The offending officer is suffering from LMS. (little man syndrome)
I hope he loses he job but he probably won’t.
Were the white, female instigators detained, questioned, thrown to the ground?
Welcome to the new post-racial Texas.
That fucking piece of shit of an “authority figure” did not “ask [those two boys] to sit down on the grass”.
He yelled and screamed that they were supposed to get their asses over there.
He also threatened the young girl with arrest if she “did not knock it off”, this while he is pressing her face into the grass.
What’s she supposed to stop doing, breathing? He obviously assaulted her.
Short man complex.
Seriously, it takes a lot of self control and confidence to be a police officer. You’ve got to let a lot wash off your back. This guy thinks he can point a flashlight at people like a gun, and then point a gun like a gun, and threaten to arrest everyone if they don’t listen. When you’re completely outnumbered you have to figure out better tactics than that.