"The cops just started putting everyone on the ground and in handcuffs for no reason."

[Content Note: Racism; police brutality.]

Over the weekend, a video of police detaining, handcuffing, and/or physically assaulting black teenagers at a pool party in Texas went viral. The video was shot by a 15-year-old white boy named Brandon Brooks, who explains [CN: moving gifs and images of police brutality at link]: "A fight between a mom and a girl broke out and when the cops showed up everyone ran, including the people who didn't do anything. ...So the cops just started putting everyone on the ground and in handcuffs for no reason. This kind of force is uncalled for especially on children and innocent bystanders. ...Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic. [The cop] didn't even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible. ...I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don't live in the neighborhood were in the pool."

One of the police officers who arrived at the scene, a white man, is seen in the video grabbing a 15-year-old black girl named Dajerria Becton and roughly wrestling her to the ground. When two black teens approach to stop him from harming her, he draws his weapon and chases them away, then goes back to the girl, pushes her face into the ground, drags her across the grass, and kneels on her back for minutes, as she cries in pain and bystanding teens beg him to get off of her.

The girl had nothing to do with the fight that broke out at the party, except insomuch as she is black, and the fight began because the white parents were being racists and the teens pushed back:

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."

...Grace Stone, a white 14-year-old, told BuzzFeed News that when she and her friends objected to the racist comments about public housing an adult woman then became violent.

...Stone told BuzzFeed News that when she approached the officers to explain what had happened in the pool the cop featured in the video ordered that she be handcuffed. "I asked why I was in handcuffs and he wouldn't tell me," she said, adding that she was the only white person handcuffed.

So, white adults express rank racism at black kids, and a mixed race group of kids challenges that rank racism, so a white adult starts a physical fight with a child, and yet somehow the black kids are at fault and a black teenage girl is violently detained by a cop.

Meanwhile, this is how the McKinney, Texas, police department tried to defend this bullshit on its Facebook page:

Pool Party Incident:

On June 5, 2015 at approximately 7:15 p.m., officers from the McKinney Police Department 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.

First responding officers encountered a large crowd that refused to comply with police commands. Nine additional units responded to the scene. Officers were eventually able to gain control of the situation.

McKinney Police later learned of a video that was taken at the scene by an unknown party. This video has raised concerns that are being investigated by the McKinney Police Department. At this time, one of the responding officers has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.

It's all the kids' fault. The "juveniles." A term which is rarely used outside of any context in which kids' behavior is being criminalized. And it's their fault for being somewhere they didn't belong, for not knowing their place.

And the absurd language used to try to justify this level of police presence: "Actively fighting." Like it was a brawl. Started by black kids who didn't belong, and not a fight started by white adults who attacked children who refused to tolerate their racism.

Of course, of course, white residents are already rallying around the police. Said one local white woman who refused to show her face on the news: "I feel absolutely horrible for the police and what's going on…they were completely outnumbered and they were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing and using profanity and threatening security guards."

The kids were fleeing. So what about letting them just leave? If the whole point was that they were (supposedly) crashing a party, then the solution is their leaving, the end. Teenagers using profanity (OH NOES! FETCH THE SMELLING SALTS!) is not a fucking crime, and it is certainly not a justification for the use of state-sanctioned violence against them.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard some white asshole defend state force against black teenagers because of "profanity" and "threats," I would have eleventy million dollars, and I would give every penny of it to the TraumaCare Coalition.