The Daily Show's Jon Stewart was left befuddled on Monday by the actions of a white police officer in McKinney, Texas, who slammed a black girl to the ground at a pool party and pulled his gun on several unarmed black teens over the weekend.
"How do you go from a pool party to this?" Stewart asked, imitating Eric Casebolt, the police officer, pulling out his gun.
White residents said they called police after dozens of black students arrived at a cookout and party at the residential community pool, claiming that the teens were trespassing and causing chaos. But the event was organized by a black 19-year-old, her sister, and her mom, and some of the black attendants said they lived in the area and had a pool pass.
Video of the scene that followed shows one of the police officers who responded to the disturbance calls yelling and cursing at teens. At one point, he tells the black girl that he throws on the ground to "get her ass on the ground" when she is clearly on the ground. "Not only is he being an asshole, he's redundant," Stewart said.
Stewart mocked the overzealous cop, who was also caught on tape rolling through the grass after he apparently fell while dashing to the area.
"I've never seen a cop run through a frame and do a little parkour somersault in the manner that he did," Stewart said. "That was some Starsky and Hutch shit."
Stewart followed up with an interview with body-armor-clad Jessica Williams, a correspondent of the show:
"This week's incident has taught black people here something valuable," Williams said. "When you go to a pool party, even in your own neighborhood that you live in, you have to know pool etiquette, which is no running, no splashing, no talking back, and, if at all possible, get your ass even further to the ground than it already is."
She added, "But either way, this incident is progress … It's progress because a cop pulled a gun on a group of black kids, and nobody is dead."
