My View of the McKinney Incident

Retired Officer Sal Giarratani

As a retired police officer with over 27 years on the job, the news story and video on the officer at a pool disturbance down in McKinney, Texas, looked pretty bad. I also watched a TV interview with the young lady in the video on the ground, her father, and the family lawyer—none of them took any personal responsibility for what happened at the reportedly out-of-control pool party.

According to media sources, 911 calls were made by others at this pool concerning safety concerns posed by over 100 young people getting out of control. That was what brought Officer Eric Casebolt to the scene.

There are actually two stories here. The one I just mentioned and, of course, the actions of this one officer. As I watched the video, it seemed the first officer on the scene quickly went into action to quell the disturbance, but he was clearly outnumbered, and in quick time appeared to get overwhelmed when he could not get order restored.

I could see that on the video clip and felt sorry for him—he was clearly in over his head.

As a police officer for many years, there are policies and protocols about almost everything thought or imagined. With the luxury of hindsight, it was clear that the officer should have waited for more cruisers to arrive and it was clear that he progressively as the situation continued to escalate. He may have in fact helped to escalate things when his anger obviously kicked into gear. The police chief was correct in saying his officer was out of control. The officer rightly was suspended and also made the right decision to resign.

However, I refuse the narrative that this was just another racist cop out to get African Americans as I heard a minister appearing on JusticeMatters play up in his TV interview.

The parents of these so-called kids need to take some responsibility. These were not little children set upon by racist police. These were out-of-control teens who were scaring a lot of people at that pool that day.The job of police officer is a high-risk profession that comes with many unknowns. The family lawyer stated that the officer should have never pointed his gun at anyone. I watched the video—he never pointed it at anyone and he seemed quite justified in removing it for a short time from his holster for his own safety.

There has been a war on the cops’ mentality out there in many parts of the media and among race hustlers seemingly milking agenda-driven bad news.

– Sal Giarratani