A surprise at today’s press conference, which I guess now makes it unanimous among interested parties that Casebolt overreacted. Skip to 9:00 of the clip for her statement, then to 21:00 when she’s asked again if this amounts to an apology. I thought this would be a routine lawyerly “my client has done nothing wrong/the video doesn’t show everything that happened” defense, but no, she all but acknowledges wrongdoing. He overreacted, she says, because he’d responded to two suicide calls earlier in the day, one an attempt by a teenaged girl, the other a successful attempt by a man with a family, and was emotional when he got the call to proceed to Craig Ranch. “He recognizes that his emotions got the best of him,” she says. Why she’d make an admission like that when the DA hasn’t decided yet whether to file charges against him is … unclear. Maybe she and Casebolt huddled and figured his best chance to beat the rap, given the video evidence against him, is to get out there early and build public sympathy. Do prosecutors really want to come after a guy who’d spent his day coping with suicides, who’s already resigned, and who himself is now the subject of death threats (the police union rep gives some details about that at 15:30), for an incident in which no one was hurt? C’mon. The takeaway is simple: Casebolt has suffered enough.

A reporter asks the obvious question once the lawyer’s done talking. Eleven other officers responded to the call at the pool party, according to the police chief; some of them probably had emotionally trying cases to deal with earlier that day too. Why should that be an excuse for Casebolt when the other cops on the scene managed to restrain themselves? She says she’d rather not get into that while an investigation’s ongoing.