Sean Toon has been one of the first persons to become a Fox News darling on the events at Craig Ranch in McKinney Texas which led to the suspension and then retirement of Cpl Eric Casebolt for manhandling multiple teenagers at the party, including kneeling on the back of a bikini-clad 14-year-old girl after throwing her to the ground and pulling his weapon on two other boys who were coming to her aid.
Sean has proudly and happily proclaimed that the "police did nothing wrong" has been seen holding up signs thanking McKinney Police and has denied that anything racial prompted the events of that day.
Screen Shot from Fox News
“Watching 30 seconds or seven minutes of a clip, it doesn’t tell the whole story,” Toon told his local ABC affiliate WFAA. “I think [Casebolt] did what he thought he had to do to control the situation.”
You bet it doesn't tell the whole story, and that parts isn't doesn't tell don't make things look any better for Sean Toon.
Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity have loudly and angrily turned to statements made by Toon and one other resident who happens to be black to proclaim that everything Cpl. Casebolt did was not only fully justified, but actively necessary.
"What else would you want the Police to do?" Hannity has repeatedly opined? Not losing their cool to point of verbally and physically assaulting unarmed teenagers would be a good start.
And perhaps what the Officers, and even Fox News, should have done is investigate and interrogate Sean Toon the way that Buzzfeed has done because they would have found that before he called the police he was the one shouting racial epithets at the host of the party and that it was his wife Shannon Barber Toon had been with the two women who had called them "black fuckers" and took part in that attack on that 19-year-old girl which they themselves had initiated.
What Toon has failed to mention [on Fox], though, is that he was part of a group of adults that, according to teens at the pool party, initially made racist comments to the mostly black youths, sparking a violent fight.
“I’m 100% sure that he said, ‘You should go back to the Section 8 [public] housing where you’re from because you don’t belong in our neighborhood,’” Grace Stone, a 14-year-old white McKinney resident who defended her black friends, told BuzzFeed News. “That’s when I went off. I called him an asshole. He had no right to say that. You shouldn’t be that hateful. That’s when [one of Toon’s female acquaintances] came up to me and said, ‘You don’t talk to adults like that.’ She was saying I needed to do something with my life and find a nice path for myself.”
Barber Toon acknowledged to BuzzFeed News the women she had been with at the pool were involved in the fight. After calling the police to complain of teens jumping the pool fence, she took her children home before the incident, leaving her husband with the two women.
So the very guy who had made things racial has being going around on Fox News claiming there was nothing racial. More over the flip.
Sean Toon has been walking around Craig Ranch carrying sign saying "Thanks to the McKinney PD for Keeping them Safe" - yet it is interesting that Toon is now such big law enforcement supporter when he himself has a criminal record from when he was still a teenager.
Via Twitter
What the Fox hosts didn’t make clear, though, was that Toon, who has publicly supported the heavy law enforcement response, also has an extensive criminal background. Records show that in 1999 he was convicted of felony criminal mischief. According to an APBNews.com article posted to a chat group in 1999, Toon was among four teens charged with breaking into a barn, beating at least 12 turkeys to death, and spray-painting the animals with his school’s colors to celebrate a football victory. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed to BuzzFeed News he spent 285 days in jail. Records show he was also arrested in 1999 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
We always hear that the way police treat black teens as "violent by default" is justified by the presumption they have an extensive "rap sheet" - yet in this case the guy who was a "violent delinquent with the rap" sheet is the white guy in the board shorts.
This is screenshot from the video showing the fight that prompted the police being called [the source twitter account is now protected], as you can see it is not between a set of teenagers it's between and a pair of white adults and a black teenager, another pair of teenagers are seen trying to separate them while other adults cheer the attackers on.
The circumstances leading up to this confrontation are explained here by Tatyana Rose who was the party host.
According to his attorney the now former McKinney Police Officer Casebolt "regrets" all that occurred and that was "heartsick" over his decision to implement this sudden retirement.
In a press conference Wednesday, Bushkin [Casebolt's attorney] said Casebolt resigned "with a heavy heart," but hoped his resignation would facilitate greater cooperation in the community.
Bushkin told reporters that the video did not show all of Casebolt's actions and said, "His actions were only in attempt to investigate the reports of violent assaults."
"He was not targeting minorities," she added, noting that he also detained a white female near the community pool on Friday.
Bushkin claimed that prior to the call about a "disturbance" at the community pool, Casebolt had responded to two suicide calls that "took an emotional toll" on him.
"He allowed his emotions to get the better of him," she said.
Frankly, if he was that emotionally distraught at that time,
he needed to step away and take some personal time to get himself together.
But honestly if Casebolt's defense from the accusation that his actions were racially inspired is that he also handcuffed a white teen, well it turns out that white teenage was Grace, Tatyana's friend who had defended her against the friends of Sean Toon and his wife.
Jennifer Stone, the mother of the white teenage girl who defended her black friends, told BuzzFeed News that emotions in the town are running high. Her daughter, Grace, was handcuffed by police for around 30 minutes after trying to give her version of events to the officers. Grace said she was the only white person detained.
“You hear people generalizing the kids who got cuffed. Almost speaking to you like they don’t realize that your daughter was one of them,” Jennifer Stone said. “And you say, ‘Well, Grace was put in handcuffs,’ and all of a sudden it gets very quiet. The thought around town was this it was a bunch of out-of-control black and minority kids that were handcuffed.”
Isn't it interesting that the one white teen who was handcuffed just happens to be the one who had defended the kids from Sean Toons friends, and that the fight actually occurred when Tatyana
defended her to them? Yet Sean Toon who claims he saw "everything" including what wasn't shown or apparent on the tape shot by Brandon Brooks, doesn't mention any of this during multiple interviews on multiple stations? And if police did have a chance to listen to Grace describe how Sean's friends attacked her and Tatyana - why exactly weren't they cuffed and detained too? The one woman with a blue flowery top who grabbed Tatyana is visible in
Brandon's original video standing across the street from all the young men being forced to sit and be handcuffed.
We need an explanation of what the justification or rationale was for handcuffing Grace, could be that Sean and his friends pointed her out as a "Trouble Maker" for daring to call Sean an "asshole", when in fact, he was petty murch being an asshole?
Here you can see Sean Hannity berate and bully person after person who was at the party who criticize the actions of Cpl Casebolt, including the family attorney for Tatyana functionally browbeating them with what "Sean said...", never considering the possibility, let alone the fact, that Sean Toon is far from a neutral impartial witness to what occurred. Warning: like most drivel that drips from Fox News his verbal violence can be hard to watch, but I do want to point out that Hannity time and time again says that the two boys who rush to the aid of Dajerria Becton as Caseblot throws her to the ground "attacked him from behind" but in fact he's facing them the entire time, they're never behind him.
What's even far more shocking is when toward the end of the segment a black Fox News contributor accuses a Reverend who is arguing that Casebolt's actions were unacceptable and biased Plays the Cop-Hater Card by asking him "What kind of ISIS-like attack would you like to see on Cops?" and "Would you like to see car bombings, would you like to see shootings, would to like to see multiple rapes of a woman cop?" which is just so bizarre and over-the-top it's surreal.
These are the depths that Fox News has to sink too in order to bury the fact that the primary cop-supporter that they've been relying on these last few days is in fact a convicted violent criminal who'se been lying to them about everything that happened this entire time.
Contast that with this interview from Lawrence O'Donnell with the one young man, Adrian Martin, who was arrested at the scene and later released with no charges filed.
Contrary to Hannity's claims Adrian explains that he was responding to Dejarria's distress attempting to tell her that he would indeed call her mom, and was trying to let the Officer know that he was hurting her. What Hannity calls his little "taunting dance move" was actually him slipping on the grass after being bumped closer to the Officer by the other teen, after which he immediately backs up and it's as he's backing up that the Officer pulls his weapon, at which point he runs away. Once he realized that it wasn't the Officer with his gun out who was chasing him he stopped and surrendered. He accidentally bit his own tongue as they apprehended him, and he actually Thanks the Officers - who weren't Casebolt - for their professionalism.
It' s sad to consider the probability that if Casebolt had fired his weapon and Adrian Martin had lost his life, we'd have to listen to Conservatives vilify his life and memory claiming that this clearly articulate and thoughtful young man is really just a "thug" who hates cops, just wanted a chance to "shank" one, "taunt' them with a dance move, furtively "reached behind his back" and therefore "forced" the Officer to kill him.
So now loosing you footing on slippery grass is a perfectly good reason for someone to kill you in cold blood? It's pretty obvious once you hear Adrian explain and then watch the tape again that he was bumped, slipped and immediately stepped back away from the Officer that he wasn't trying to attack him at all. just get closer to Becton because she was in distress.
Eventually, as you can see all the facts will come out despite Fox's efforts to bury the truth and I suspect sooner rather than later.
Vyan
10:31 AM PT: Interview with Grace Stone from Chris Hayes "All In" show.
Grace: One of the parent said a very racial comment, racial slur, and we felt the need to step in and say something. That broke out into a a lady getting physical and violent and that's when the cops were called.
Danny Stone [Grace's Dad]: Actually two adults. When i got there is was very chaotic, I'd say between 13 and 15 police were there. I see my daughter crying, very upset, in handcuffs. A parent was there trying to get her out of the handcuffs, talking to police. I went to the police near my daughter to ask them why [she] was in handcuffs and they couldn't give me a reason. I was getting more upset, I wanted to talk to the Officer who had put her in the handcuffs [which was apparently Casebolt just before we see him barrel-rolling on Brandon's tape] and he wouldn't come over.
.,.
We sat there for about 15-20 minutes. They said things, they started to make... almost like they were guessing at what she did wrong. They even said that she resisted arrest, and that she was mouthy. She was mouthy, but that was to the parents, not the parents the resident who were making the racial slurs.
Chris: Grace, what do you say to those women who you say were making racial slurs?
Grace: It was actually an older man [who she later identified to Buzzfeed as our buddy Sean Toon] I just wanted to know his thought process, you should never be that hateful to anyone, and especially people half your age. The two women got mad because were being disrespectful to our elders, but if they really were our elders why weren't they acting like it?
Chris: What did the man say that facilitated this?
Grace: We were trying to get some kids in the pool and he said to "go back to Section 8 Housing where you belong and get out of my neighborhood"
Chris: Wow. Um uh. Mr. Stone, how did you finally get Grace out of handcuffs, what's your feeling on how the McKinney Police handled this?
Danny: Well, uh, I was very happy to get her out of handcuffs of course, but when we got home, I got very upset with my daughter. You're first reaction is to believe what the police say to you, and that's what I did but my daughter really stood her ground and stuck with her story. Uh, she knew that she wasn't supposed to talk that way to adults, but she knew she had too. it still doesn't matter, I was still very upset, until I talked to other parents and finding out other details. The parent that was there, as she was handcuffs, she filled in a lot blanks and it calmed me down alot with how I felt towards my daughter. After that I called the police dept, and apparently spoke to that man's boss, he couldn't tell me alot. He called me back the next day and after reviewing a lot of things caught on video, that really vindicated my daughter. Basically she came up and wanted to tell the Officer what happened, and he put her in handcuffs. The officer asked her is she was involved, she said "yes" and the Officer put her in handcuffs [immediately assuming that she was at fault, not any of the parents or residents]
11:07 AM PT: Just for clarity Sean's wife Shannon was not one of the two women who berated Grace and attacked Tatyana, those women have been identified as Kate and Tricia [correction because I was in a hurry when I added this] Tracey.
Tricia Tracey has now been placed on administrative leave from her job for her involvement once her ID was confirmed.
11:28 AM PT: Adrian Martin being interviewed by the Dallas Morning News.
