The crime in McKinney
by digby
Via Salon, I see that last night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly cleared the whole thing up:
On “The Kelly File” Monday, host Megyn Kelly spent almost half the program trying to justify the decisions made by the police during the incident at a McKinney, Texas pool party on Friday.
Kelly began by talking to “Sean,” a man who was at the pool party with his wife and young children. He said he called police because “the music that the DJ was playing wasn’t appropriate for my son, or even for the teens.”
“Sean” said that situation only got out of hand, however, when the teens at the party began to “attack” residents by calling them “racist.” White residents had complained to the pool security guard that the group of teens — who were attending a combination graduation/birthday party — didn’t look like they lived in the community.
“So the teens who were jumping the fence were calling residents ‘racist,’” Kelly said, speaking for aggrieved white conservatives everywhere who know that there’s no violence more violent than being accused of believing what many white conservatives proudly believe.
I can see what happened. A bunch of black teenagers were playing their dirty black music. And then for no apparent reason, out of the blue, they started calling the white people racists which is tantamount to a lynching. They were asking for it.
When I first wrote about this on Sunday, I entitled the post “he only saw the black kids” and people told me that there weren’t any white kids for him to chase. But the fact is that the kid who filmed the whole thing was white and here’s what he said:
The footage was taken during a party held at a local pool. Some residents have argued that attendees were being unruly, prompting them to call police for assistance. But according to Brooks, residents wrongfully pushed to escalate authorities’ response.
“Most of the kids weren’t even involved,” he said. “It was a fight between a mom and girl, which had nothing to do with all the other kids that she apparently needed more cops for.”
Casebolt then arrived and started “going crazy” after tripping and dropping his flashlight, Brooks said.
“I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening,” he explained. “You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kinda like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down.”
Last night’s Chris Hayes interviewed another participant in the incident, a 14 year old white girl, also handcuffed and manhandled by the police, who said that it was the white residents who started the insults and she and her friends felt they had to step up and defend the other kids. Then a couple of white women got physical and a fight broke out. The cops arrived shortly and just started running around like Starsky and Hutch chasing kids willy nilly, which we all saw on the video.
That interview was extremely interesting because this girl’s father came to the scene found his daughter handcuffed and couldn’t get any police officer to explain why. He assumed that the police must have had a good reason and blamed his daughter until he got the facts from other adults at the party at which point he realized that his girl had been in the right.
I’ve been watching this story on cable with horror. To me this is one of the Rodney King incidents where I look at the footage and what I see is very clear: cops acting completely out of control. This is not debatable in my view. Setting aside the assault on the girl in the bikini, which is obviously obscene, the way he screams at those two young boys sitting handcuffed on the grass who are crying and saying “sir we just came for a birthday party” tells you exactly what was going on. This cop demands to be in control at all times and if he isn’t he will get violent. And when he pulled a gun in a situation where there were many children, none of them armed and dangerous, there’s little doubt about his mindset. His screaming lecture to them about how they didn’t jump to when he ordered them to and how they have to obey him no questions asked is just chilling.
Every one of the kids I’ve seen interviewed are just average American teens. These aren’t crips and bloods, hardcore street toughs or even slightly threatening people. They are just kids and it’s completely obvious. They didn’t know they were endangering their lives by simply being teenagers.
We knew that it was terrifying to have a black teenage son in America. Now we know it’s just as terrifying to have a black teenage daughter. That white father had obviously taught his daughter to have integrity and stand up for the underdog and she paid a price for that by being handcuffed by the cops. But black parents cannot afford to teach their children to speak up and speak out. Those kids could very well die because they don’t know that what they learn in school about rights and free speech and justice doesn’t apply to them. Those two handcuffed young boys who were trying to explain themselves to the police officer certainly know better now. They’ll never really feel free again, will they?
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