Blog

Press Statement

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) denounces the colonial police attack on African children at a pool party in the Dallas suburb of McKinney, TX on Friday, June 5.

A video from the scene shows white McKinney cop Eric Casebolt brutally pulling 15-year-old Dajerria Becton to the ground, pinning her down and straddling her on the grass outside the pool in a violent assault with heavy sexual connotations.

The crime of Becton and the other African children at the party was their presence in an upscale, predominantly white neighborhood.

Casebolt also pulled his gun and pointed it at African teens who courageously tried to come to Becton’s aid. Yelling profanities at the children and chasing them, the physically abusive cop was joined by at least nine other cops who terrorized the youth, handcuffed many and forced them to sit or lay on the ground.

The group of African children had also been physically attacked by white women who lived in the neighborhood where the pool party was taking place. Screaming racial slurs at the children, the women’s actions exposed the complicity of many white people—including white women—in the colonial terror historically waged against African people.

This blatant sexual violence against Becton brings up the history of sexual violence by white men against African women and girls throughout our forced enslavement and as colonial subjects inside the U.S. This attack is tied to the reality that countless African women have been raped, lynched, tortured and terrorized by white men over the centuries, often in front of African children and men and often with the complicity of white women.

The Black is Back Coalition also recognizes that this assault on these African children is just the latest in an ongoing stream of colonial police violence, murder and abuse of the African community.

The number of African victims of terror and murder by the colonial police continues to grow at a rate of at least two a day in the U.S.

From 7-year-old Aiyana Jones in Detroit, to 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, to 18-year-old Mike Brown in Ferguson, to 43-year-old Eric Garner in Staten Island, to 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta, the list goes on and on to such an extent that our children are riddled with fear and loathing at the sight of police.

This is why the Black is Back Coalition has demanded Black Community Control of Police. The BIBC recognizes that the police are an arm of the U.S. colonial State in a social system that was built on the enslavement of African people and the theft of our labor, resources and freedom on land stolen from the Indigenous people.

On April 17 and 18, the BIBC held a national conference in St. Louis, MO, drawing African participants from all over the U.S., many of whom had been victimized by police violence.

The conference launched the campaign for Black Community Control of Police, a campaign that was enthusiastically embraced by mothers and family members of victims of police violence and the African community at large

At that conference BIBC recognized that the murders and assaults on the African community are not accidents due to the lack of police body cameras or a lack of training.

BIBC recognized that this is a problem that can’t be fixed by police review boards or diversionary government-sponsored discussions on race relations.

Through Black Community Control of Police the African community will be empowered to hire, fire and determine the training of the police.

The Black is Back Coalition makes the following demands:

• The immediate arrest of McKinney cop Eric Casebolt for sexual assault on 15-year-old Dajerria Becton.
• Indictment and arrest of all the cops involved in the attack on the children at the pool party.
• Indictment and arrest of the white women who assaulted the African children prior to the arrival of the police.
• Reparations to the families of all the children threatened and assaulted by police and white citizens in this attack.