Everybody Outta the Pool! (or The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same)

[Loren Pechtel]

Hey now. No need to be sensible.

The cop was over-zealous. But when he got rushed, he was within his authority to pull his gun. He was surrounded by half a dozen people, with two males coming towards him. What in the fuck gave them the idea to think that was okay to do?

When the cops give you an opportunity to leave, you fucking leave. Get in your car and drive away, walk away, get on your bike, catch a sky-hook ride from the CIA. Whatever. What you do't do is stick around, scream, and rush at them.

Yeah. He is guilty of being overzealous.

 

[ksen]

Overzealous cops get people killed.

 

[Hickdive]

...What you do't do is stick around, scream, and rush at them.

Oh, which video were you watching? It can't be the one on page one of this thread because in that the cop walks over to the girl, pulls her away from the people she's standing with and then pushes her to the ground; about the 2.50 to 3.00 minute mark. She may not have dispersed as quickly as the officer would have liked but that was no reason to go over to her and grab her. She certainly does not scream at him or rush at him prior to his assault on her and she screams in response to the attack.

The officer has clearly been working himself into a blind rage and at that point he snaps and loses control of himself. At that point he assaults the girl. That alone should be a serious disciplinary offence and any senior officer viewing that video should be asking themselves whether this guy is a suitable person to be not only a police officer but a promoted one. The point at which he draws his weapon (and his colleagues come very close to restraining him) is the point at which he is guilty of gross misconduct.

What is very significant is the fact that for the first three minutes of the video it looks as if he is the only officer on scene when in fact it becomes apparent that there are other officers present. It looks very much as if they were standing back, reluctant to get involved in this guy's meltdown.

 

[bilby]

A crowd might disperse. But for an individual person to disperse is incompatible with their continued survival, and it is unrealistic to expect them to do so on command in the absence of a vat of powerful solvent.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I know the area.

It's a mixed race area.

The pool is private and part of the HOA.

The HOA requires that if you want a party on their premises, you have to sign up for it and get approval. There are all kinds of rules and legal responsibilities.

The pool is not part of that. You have to get separate permission to use the pool for a party.

I know because I once planned a party in an HOA right down the street from there.

The HOA allows its members to bring guests to the pool. Limit of two per member.

1) The HOA says they were unaware there was a party to be taking place on their property

2) The pool was not part of the original party. Some of the party members or party crashers (apparently it was advertised on Facebook, meaning anyone could show up), started jumping the fence and getting in the pool area. Members started passing their pool cards to their friends through the fences so they could get in. Some of the members took offense to this and an ugly argument got started that escalated. People ran to join, the security guard, overwhelmed, called the cops to break up the fight and rowdy partiers.

3) The cop asked the girl - you can see this in the video - to disperse 7 times. She did not.

4) Mother was asked why people at the party were breaking the HOA rules. She replied, "Everyone does it." As if that's a good reason to break rules yourself.

The cop was afraid of being overrun. He didn't pull his gun on the girl, he pulled it on the people rushing him to help her.

Could the cop have handled this better? You bet.

Should the kids have obeyed the cop? You bet.

Hey now. No need to be sensible.

The cop was over-zealous. But when he got rushed, he was within his authority to pull his gun. He was surrounded by half a dozen people,

Surrounded? got rushed?

...with two males coming towards him. What in the fuck gave them the idea to think that was okay to do?

They were running to her aid. You can watch the video and see the moment they recognize what they appeared to be doing. They never for a moment appear to be going for the officer.

When the cops give you an opportunity to leave, you fucking leave. Get in your car and drive away, walk away, get on your bike, catch a sky-hook ride from the CIA. Whatever. What you do't do is stick around, scream, and rush at them.

What about the people he told to sitdown? Should they have left instead of sitting down?

 

[RavenSky]

The man who called 911 to complain about a group of black teenagers at a pool party in Texas, and defended the controversial police response as a “good amount of aggression”, is a convicted felon who spent time in jail for violent behaviour and torturing animals.

In November 1999, aged 18, Toon and three high school friends were arrested and expelled from school after vandalising the agricultural centre of a rival high school district and attacking animals housed there, many of which were owned and cared for by school children.

“Cows and pigs were cut and bruised, apparently beaten with wooden boards. And baby turkeys were slain, their limbs torn apart,” the Dallas Morning News reported at the time. Dale Gardner, a teacher in the school district’s agriscience and technology program, told the newspaper: “It was brutal. There’s no way to describe it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In September 2000, Toon was charged in nearby Denton County with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records. After pleading guilty to an unspecified lesser charge, Toon was sentenced to 75 days in jail.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/texas-pool-party-911-caller-convicted-felon

This is the guy who called police to complain about the “out of control kids” at the pool who intimidated his seven-year-old child.

Reportedly he is also the one who told the teenagers they needed to go back to Section 8 housing.

What Toon has failed to mention, though, is that he was part of a group of adults that, according to teens at the pool party, initially made racist comments to the mostly black youths, sparking a violent fight.

“I’m 100% sure that he said, ‘You should go back to the Section 8 [public] housing where you’re from because you don’t belong in our neighborhood,’” Grace Stone, a 14-year-old white McKinney resident who defended her black friends, told BuzzFeed News. “That’s when I went off. I called him an asshole. He had no right to say that. You shouldn’t be that hateful. That’s when [one of Toon’s female acquaintances] came up to me and said, ‘You don’t talk to adults like that.’ She was saying I needed to do something with my life and find a nice path for myself.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/what-caused-mckinneys-pool-to-boil-over#.xfqAo0azbA

 

[Sajara]

In an interview with Fox News this week, Toon also defended Casebolt. “It was chaos when he arrived there and he kind of had to match that situation with a good amount of aggression to kind of calm the crowd down,” he said.

Yeah, any time I've been in a situation where chaos was prevalent, aggression was always what calmed that situation down...NOT.

 

[credoconsolans]

What's this I'm reading now?

The girl involved isn't 15 but actually 19 years old?

 

[Nexus]

I tried to search but upon cursory examination the teen girl was 15. However I do notice biased media coverage. For instance there are headlines about Tracey Carver-Allbritton an adult white woman that started the fight with the 15 year old black girl before the cops came and this was the fight that prompted them being involved. But if you watch the video Tracey is trying to break up the fight between two girls and towards the end she hits the black girl to get her to break her grip and make her let go of the others hair. She immediately stops striking once the grips are broken and gets between the two while backing away. The entire time she was saying get her off. That's certainly not beating up a child as the media is portraying it.

Here's a video.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ym0KcWv8RI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[repoman]

This is an interview with the white kid who filmed the girl get thrown down by the cop. It is on Boyce Watkins youtube channel.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

What's this I'm reading now?

The girl involved isn't 15 but actually 19 years old?

There are two different girls

 

[laughing dog]

and the mental gymnastics required to convince themselves that there is nothing racial about this because if you simply swapped the skin color of the teens to whites the exact same scenario would have played out is frankly disturbing.

That's not really a fair comparison because white people wouldn't need to jump a fence to get in since they could just have the security guards open the gates for them, not to mention that they'd probably have been invited in the first place.

White people cannot jump so they would have to use the gate.

 

[thebeave]

I don't think we can even say at this point that the white kids at the party are really white, and the black kids at the party are really black. Race is too nebulous of a concept, and you can't tell someone's race just by looking at 'em. For example, Gabrielle Reece is black. You all are really racist for jumping to conclusions about who is black and who is white in this incident.

 

[fromderinside]

You all are really racist for jumping to conclusions about who is black and who is white in this incident.

No. The police officers were racist for jumping on those who 'looked' black and whom they assumed were the cause of the problem. That's the problem. Racism in police protection and service.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

But this wasn't a situation so grossly abusive and so obviously oppressive, that the guy didn't deserve a fair hearing. As a matter of fact, there is no such situation where the denial of due process exists based on on a video. At least not in the U.S.

i disagree with this completely on 2 counts:
1. it's not about being abusive and/or oppressive, that isn't the only criteria by which one can (or should) judge the actions of a cop - they are public servants, instruments of the collective will of society, and i don't give a flying fuck if a teenaged girl refused to disperse 7 times or 7,000 times, and if her other pool-party friends rushed up to her or not; there is no excuse for the cop to have pulled his weapon, period, end of discussion.

2. fair hearing for what? you don't go to court for being a dipshit at work and getting fired over it.
he got sacked for being a dipshit who sucks at his job, it's not like a grand jury inquest is required to ascertain the legality of sacking some dipshit for sucking at their job.

This^ is you not knowing the law combined with not caring what the law actually is. This^ is also not understanding that the same laws would protect you in a situation where you'd normally be entitled to a hearing before you were fired.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

Hey now. No need to be sensible.

The cop was over-zealous. But when he got rushed, he was within his authority to pull his gun. He was surrounded by half a dozen people,

Surrounded? got rushed?

...with two males coming towards him. What in the fuck gave them the idea to think that was okay to do?

They were running to her aid. You can watch the video and see the moment they recognize what they appeared to be doing. They never for a moment appear to be going for the officer.

When the cops give you an opportunity to leave, you fucking leave. Get in your car and drive away, walk away, get on your bike, catch a sky-hook ride from the CIA. Whatever. What you do't do is stick around, scream, and rush at them.

What about the people he told to sitdown? Should they have left instead of sitting down?

You have more sense than this.

1. Running to her aid? And the cop is supposed to do exactly what? Was he suppose to divine their intent? Did they have the legal authority to come to her aid? The answer to the last two questions are a firm "no."

He wasn't seeing the situation from a third person perspective. He had 3-4 people yelling at him who were standing right in front him. From his right periphery, two more people were running towards him and yelling. I would argue that a reasonably prudent person given the same conditions would react similarly. And I would win that argument, particularly given the privileges and immunities that police officers necessarily must have and based on the circumstances attendant in the video. The evidence can easily be argued that he reasonably believed the need to exercise an exceptional show of force in order to maintain the condition.

You can argue that he created the situation but what proof do you have that he did? What concrete evidence can you give that shows he created the situation? "Look at the video" isn't proof. You have to show it. You can't take a video into court and simply tell a jury or a panel to look at it and draw their own conclusions.

2. What would you charge him with?

I would guess negligence, but then you'd have to prove every element of negligence as applied to the facts of the situation in conjunction with a whole lotta other shit.

3. The people he told to sit down? Stay sitting until instructed to do otherwise.

In such a situation, we are not equal to the police. A lot of people don't seem to understand that. One should be able to infer it from the fact that they can arrest you and haul you off to prison, but apparently there are many who seem to believe otherwise---to their detriment.

Any violation of rights, any abuses, etc. get sorted out afterward.

 

[Bacillus anthracis]

As a parent I would be enraged at someone hurting my child, but that's just me.

And you can go ahead and feel that way. And should a run-in with the cops occur again, your child will feel even more emboldened. Except maybe the consequences will be far worse.

Or on the other hand, you could tell your child to avoid such situations, leave if a such a situation does occur, and remember what happened the last time.
But that's just me. I have a thing for keeping my kids safe and out of jail, and teaching them to exercise good judgment.

Don't try and misconstrue what I've said into something about me supporting anything the police do. You've already read what I've wrote about how I feel on that particular subject.

 

[RavenSky]

1. Running to her aid? And the cop is supposed to do exactly what? Was he suppose to divine their intent? Did they have the legal authority to come to her aid? The answer to the last two questions are a firm "no."

He wasn't seeing the situation from a third person perspective. He had 3-4 people yelling at him who were standing right in front him. From his right periphery, two more people were running towards him and yelling. I would argue that a reasonably prudent person given the same conditions would react similarly. And I would win that argument, particularly given the privileges and immunities that police officers necessarily must have and based on the circumstances attendant in the video. The evidence can easily be argued that he reasonably believed the need to exercise an exceptional show of force in order to maintain the condition. .

You didn't actually watch the video did you?

If you had, you would have seen what everyone else saw - that the two boys did start to run towards the girl on the ground, but checked themselves. They were at a full stop before the cop eye-balled them, stood up, and then pulled his gun on them.

The cop had zero justification.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't think we can even say at this point that the white kids at the party are really white, and the black kids at the party are really black. Race is too nebulous of a concept, and you can't tell someone's race just by looking at 'em. For example, Gabrielle Reece is black. You all are really racist for jumping to conclusions about who is black and who is white in this incident.

From the recent two years, I think FR has proven it can't handle discussing race.

 

[Toni]

I know the area.

It's a mixed race area.

The pool is private and part of the HOA.

The HOA requires that if you want a party on their premises, you have to sign up for it and get approval. There are all kinds of rules and legal responsibilities.

The pool is not part of that. You have to get separate permission to use the pool for a party.

I know because I once planned a party in an HOA right down the street from there.

The HOA allows its members to bring guests to the pool. Limit of two per member.

1) The HOA says they were unaware there was a party to be taking place on their property

2) The pool was not part of the original party. Some of the party members or party crashers (apparently it was advertised on Facebook, meaning anyone could show up), started jumping the fence and getting in the pool area. Members started passing their pool cards to their friends through the fences so they could get in. Some of the members took offense to this and an ugly argument got started that escalated. People ran to join, the security guard, overwhelmed, called the cops to break up the fight and rowdy partiers.

3) The cop asked the girl - you can see this in the video - to disperse 7 times. She did not.

4) Mother was asked why people at the party were breaking the HOA rules. She replied, "Everyone does it." As if that's a good reason to break rules yourself.

The cop was afraid of being overrun. He didn't pull his gun on the girl, he pulled it on the people rushing him to help her.

Could the cop have handled this better? You bet.

Should the kids have obeyed the cop? You bet.

I believe you about the rules of your HOA.

I am not at all certain why you believe that a different HOA has exactly the same rules.

I think I know why the complaining individuals identified some of the people as violators of the HOA rules. I think it had to do with the color of their skin. This is reinforced by the 'go back to your Section 8 housing' type of remarks directed at individuals of a particular race.

It is possible that this is such a tight knit community that everyone knows everyone else, so an outsider is pretty obvious. But somehow, given that the mother of the hostess says if anyone had had any problems, they only needed to direct their complaints to her, I kind of doubt that unfamiliarity of faces was the issue.