Knocking Heroes Off Their Pedestals

A white policeman, black young people, a gun and a teenager on the ground. Another video has surfaced in the United States showing a police officer reacting in an exaggerated and aggressive way for no apparent reason during an incident at a swimming pool.

As first shown on the website Mashable and later published in The Washington Post, the incident happened over the weekend in McKinney, Texas, where a party held at a municipal swimming pool got rowdy. Police in the city of 140,000 referred to the incident as a “breach of the peace” in which several youths were involved,

The YouTube video — viewed by more than 4.5 million people — shows a police officer drawing his weapon and aiming it for no apparent reason at a group of unarmed teenagers. He is also seen forcing a girl to the ground and pinning her head to the ground using his full body weight to hold her down. He can be heard repeatedly screaming, “Get your asses on the ground!” at the teenagers.

Conditions during the incident appear to be chaotic, but in no way dramatically dangerous. The only aggression apparent was instigated by the police and calm was eventually restored by other police officers. In the end, a total of 12 officers had gotten involved in the harmless fracas, which resulted in the arrest of one adult male.

Texas Police Brutality

The media identified the police officer involved as 10-year police veteran Eric Casebolt, an experienced officer. The McKinney police did not confirm the officer’s identity but did announce that one of its officers was being temporarily suspended pending the outcome of an investigation.

The incident attracted a lot of attention in the United States. The fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and the excessive police violence used against blacks in New York and other states have caused waves of protest and unleashed a debate concerning racism. The Texas incident now continues the history of violence and racism. It’s a tensely charged situation in a city where African-Americans make up only about 10 percent of the population. The mayor of the community north of metropolitan Dallas said he was distraught and worried about the incident and the father of the 14-year-old girl took to social media calling for the suspension of the police officer while Fox News interviewed his daughter. Fifteen-year-old Brandon Brooks, who caught the incident on his cell phone camera, told BuzzFeed, “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.” Brooks himself is white.

Idolized and Glorified

No one in McKinney was seriously injured and the police have since ordered a full-scale investigation. One might ask why there was so much fuss and why this particular video made it into the network news. Every occurrence of this sort deserves and demands public notice. It’s almost exhausting to keep returning to 9/11 in search of answers, but the terrorist attacks fundamentally changed America in so many ways — and that includes the role of the police.

The police have been idolized and glorified in the same manner as firemen. The cliché of friend and helper has been broadened to include the hero who acts on behalf of a paralyzed society. This glorification, however, has included everybody wearing a uniform whether deserved or not. One of the more tragic examples of this was the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, when a grand jury chose to not even put patrolman Darren Wilson on trial for fatally shooting Mr. Brown in November 2014.

The videos as well as the facts in the Texas incident have helped in the deconstruction of this hero myth. McKinney showed a detailed picture of the aggression and the racist prejudices some policemen carry with them on the job. With each and every documented incident it becomes more evident that U.S. society must engage in a debate about the prevalence of police violence. But the image of the shining hero is difficult to deconstruct: By Sunday a sign had appeared at the swimming pool thanking the police for working so hard to protect the safety of McKinney’s citizens.