The state governor condemned what seemed to be “racially disparate treatment” on Wednesday after a video showed US police forcibly hitting a black teenager during a dispute with a young white man stirred uproar.
The video shows a fist fight between two teens at a shopping mall in Bridgewater, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, as posted by the app Storify and picked up by ABC, CBS, and CNN.
Two police officers come after about 10 seconds and violently separate the teenagers.
However, while the black teenager is forcibly tossed to the ground by the police officer, the young white male is simply made to sit on a sofa.
A policewoman is then seen placing her knee on the young black man’s back as he lies flat on his stomach, handcuffed by a male cop.
“They basically tackle me to the ground and then the one – the male officer put his knee in my back and then he starts putting me in cuffs,” the black teen, who gave his name as Kye, told ABC.
The Bridgewater Mall Fight is the clearest example of how police actively use race as a shorthand for who they perceive as a threat.
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) February 16, 2022
See for yourself. pic.twitter.com/ThJPQFNEzO
“And then the female officer came over and put her knee on my upper back too and started helping putting cuffs on me.”
The rest of the arrest of the black teenager is not seen in the video, nor what happened to the young white man who was not detained.
The video had “made members of our community upset,” acknowledged Bridgewater Township police, who pledged an internal inquiry on Facebook.
Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey slammed the police response.
“Although an investigation is still gathering the facts about this incident, I’m deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment in this video,” he tweeted.
Although an investigation is still gathering the facts about this incident, I’m deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment in this video. We’re committed to increasing trust between law enforcement and the people they serve. https://t.co/ck9yCXMmL0
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) February 16, 2022
Racism in law enforcement is a hot topic in the United States, with young black males facing far more police violence than white men.
The viral video of Mr. George Floyd, a black man, being killed by police in 2020 spurred nationwide demonstrations and calls for law enforcement reform.
Mr Steffie Bartley, north-east regional director of the anti-racist National Action Network, condemned what he called the “implicit bias” seen in the Bridgewater video.
“Why was the young black man on the ground with handcuffs while the young white man was sitting on the couch as if he were overseeing?” he said in a statement.
Image Credit: AFP
You were reading: Another video of US police violently tackling black teen sparks outrage