The woman, Samantha Louise Eley, yelled and cursed at the teenagers, who were using a swingset on the playground Oct. 16 at Dream Park in Fort Worth and said she was a police officer, the video shows.
Dressed in blue and white running shorts, Eley, 38, is heard at the beginning of the video telling the teenagers to “stop.”
“It’s a children’s park,” she said. “Stop now.”
Eley is seen walking over to a swing that someone is playing on, then slamming her hands on it to abruptly stop it.
“We are children,” one of the teenagers told Eley, who cursed at the group and insisted that they were not children.
As the teenagers began protesting her actions, Eley turned, cursed again and declared herself “PD.”
Using an expletive, she told the teenagers to get “out of here now if you’re not here to play as a child.”
In the video, one teenager in the group is seen telling Eley that she is 16 years old.
“Right,” Eley replied before cursing and telling the girl that she’s “not a child.”
Eley told the 16-year-old that she could “literally arrest” her as an adult.
“Which is your choice?” she continued. “Are you a child or a goddamn adult? Go now! Get out of here!”
The one-minute video, which has been viewed more than 5 million times and spawned the nickname “Swingset Susan” for the woman, is reminiscent of other widely seen videos in which white people have called police on black people as they go about participating in everyday activities or events. The people in those episodes also inspired sobriquets, including, “Golf Cart Gail,” “Cornerstore Caroline,” “BBQ Becky” and “Permit Patty.”
One day after Eley’s outburst at the playground, the Fort Worth Police Department confirmed on Twitter that she was not a police officer and that they were investigating the matter.
Police tracked down one of the teenagers in the video, who then picked Eley out of a photo lineup as the woman screaming in the video, according to a police arrest warrant affidavit.
The teenager told Detective B. Cantu that she believed Eley was a police officer and left the park with her friends because of the confrontation, according to the affidavit.
Cantu went to speak with Eley on Oct. 22, but she “refused to be interviewed at that time,” the affidavit said.
Eley was charged Wednesday. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case. Calls to Eley’s home and her lawyer Friday evening were not immediately returned.
This article originally appeared in
.