‘Basketball Cop’ Celebrated On Social Media Filmed Assaulting Black Man
A Florida cop who went viral four years ago when he was filmed playing basketball with a group of Black teens is under fire after new video has been revealed showing him slamming a young Black man against his patrol car.
Deemed the “Basketball Cop” after the 2016 video, Gainesville police officer Bobby White was captured on video two years prior, in 2014, physically assaulting a Black man after stopping him for riding his bike through a stop sign.
Reform advocates in Gainesville and nationwide point to the contrasting videos as proof that more needs to be done when it comes to police reform.
The video of White assaulting the teen was shared by real estate agent Chanae Jackson, who received it from a friend and decided others needed to see it too.
“The culture of police departments creates an environment where there are no real consequences for these officers,” Ms. Jackson wrote in her post under the clip of Mr. White’s encounter with the teenager.
Jackson argues that law enforcement in Gainesville remains plagued by the ugly legacy of the Jim Crow south. “Peel back the layers, and Gainesville is not progressive at all,” she said.
White was a critic of ex-cop Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd, saying that police nationwide have been embarrassed by Chauvin’s handling of the situation. “I'm FRUSTRATED for the vast majority of the great officers who go out there everyday and do their best to honor their oath, just to have their efforts diminished by incidents like this,” he wrote in a statement.
White remains on active duty in the Gainesville police department. A 2015 internal investigation in the matter involving the Black teen cleared him of any wrongdoing.
