I don't think Casebolt really interpreted the teen fidgeting with his pants loops as reaching for a weapon.
Well, he directly and immediately responded to him reaching back to his waist. We can't know what he
thought, but we sure know what he
did.
It seems more like he didn't want them coming up on them, and so he pulled out his gun to scare them off. Which might be fine with some of you, but virtually every police department in the country has rules against that kind of thing.
What the fuck are you talking about? He takes his gun out of the holster and toggles safety off. He never even points it at anyone. All he's done is he prepared himself for a potential threat, then understood there's no threat, and proceeded to put the gun back in.
Cops are only supposed to draw their guns if they're prepared to use deadly force. It's not a tool for casual intimidation.
Yes, which is why he didn't pull the gun when he was just surrounded, but reacted immediately when the kid started reaching for the exact area where anyone would be concealing their weapons. And then he immediately put it back in his holster once the threat was clearly gone.
Throwing a temper tantrum and doing good police work are pretty much mutually exclusive.
What temper tantrum?
There were at least two other cops at the scene, and their behavior was markedly different to Casebolt's.
And in the next episode of "Saddam Says Irrelevant Shit", Saddam will analyse the behaviour of the kids who complied with the cops and sat down like they were supposed to! Stay tuned!
They didn't feel the need to yell and swear at bystanders.
What bystanders?
They didn't feel the need to start making arrests.
Yes, they did. You do realise we have a video which shows them cuffing multiple people, right?
And they didn't feel the need to whip their guns out
Do you think that might have something to do with them not being surrounded by a number of people and one of them reaching for what could have been a gun?
in fact, you can see one of them put his hands on Casebolt when he drew his gun
Yes, they were behind the kid at the time, they saw he has nothing there. Casebolt didn't, so they ran up all like "nah mate, shit's safe".
probably worried (as the poor teen no doubt was) that he was going to blast him away right then and there in his fury.
What fury? You're fabricating this so hard. I don't understand why. He's forceful, yes, but not angry.
Chances are the entire thing would have gone a lot more smoothly if Casebolt had just stepped back and let his calmer colleagues take charge, rather than continue to aggravate the situation himself.
Depends on your definition of "smoothly". Before he toughened up, something like half of the crowd ran away from the scene prior to being identified. If your definition of a smooth police intervention is "welp, the criminals got away, but at least we didn't roughen up a black girl", then... well, I hope that will be resolved in your police training.