Police response to N.J. mall fight sparks outrage after Black teen cuffed as white teen watches

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Well, I just read a long thread and learned nothing of value... again...

Did you at least get the free t-shirt?

 

[Gospel]

No.
Officers are trained to back up their partner. That's what she did.
Regardless of what she was thinking, that wasn't the time for a "You shouldn't do this. We're all gonna regret it." lecture.
Tom

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread

That's what Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane thought. You see where that got them.

Edit: Link for reference.

 

[Toni]

Why was she wrong to assist her partner?

Because her partner was violating someone's civil rights by not treating them equally.

What? Each cop attended to one of the two boys. The male cop could not treat each boy equally after the fight was broken up and neither could the female cop.

Utter nonsense. Of course if one child was cuffed, the other one could have cuffed as well. In fact, if that had happened, I suspect there would have been no OP about this.

Well, neither of them should have been cuffed.

My opinion after watching abs re-watching the video is that the female officer quickly dealt with Franco and then very quickly came to the aid of her fellow officer without having time to assess whether he had responded appropriately with Husain. Her move was to back up her partner, something that I believe is strongly emphasized in training. All of this took place in a few seconds time.

Her first response was to sit the boy she was dealing with down and tell him to stay put—that’s how I interpreted her hand on his chest. Then she moved to back up her partner.

The male officer’s response was to grapple with the boy he was dealing with, shove him face down and to cuff him. Whether he would have dealt with Franco in the same manner: throw him face down and cuff him is a matter of conjecture. We don’t know.

We do know—and have the data that reveals that black people are treated much more harshly by law enforcement compared with white people for exactly the same offenses.

Indeed: we see an example here.

 

[Toni]

No.
Officers are trained to back up their partner. That's what she did.
Regardless of what she was thinking, that wasn't the time for a "You shouldn't do this. We're all gonna regret it." lecture.
Tom

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread

That's what Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane thought. You see where that got them.

Edit: Link for reference.

The difference is that the incident at the NJ mall took place in a much shorter period of time compared with the incident with George Floyd. Thao et all had minutes to assess the situation, evaluate Chauvin’s actions and their own as well Floyd’s condition. The amount of time it took George Floyd to die plus a couple of minutes.

 

[Gospel]

No.
Officers are trained to back up their partner. That's what she did.
Regardless of what she was thinking, that wasn't the time for a "You shouldn't do this. We're all gonna regret it." lecture.
Tom

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread

That's what Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane thought. You see where that got them.

Edit: Link for reference.

The difference is that the incident at the NJ mall took place in a much shorter period of time compared with the incident with George Floyd. Thao et all had minutes to assess the situation, evaluate Chauvin’s actions and their own as well Floyd’s condition. The amount of time it took George Floyd to die plus a couple of minutes.

They held the black one for around 30 minutes and according to Joseph they didn't hold him at all. The similarity here is not about the length of time, the reference I was making was to officers who "just do their job" while another officer is breaking the law will be held responsible for it regardless of what people on this message board think.

 

[ZiprHead]

And suspects never change their minds about being cooperative.

It seems to me that no action the female cop could have taken would please anybody on the thread. She was praised for not being rough with Franco and for not cuffing him. Now you are hinting that she was foolish not to have cuffed him.

No, we are reacting to the vast difference in how the two boys were treated.

 

[Gospel]

Metaphor, this is not only about how the police engaged the teens it's also about them letting one teen go and detaining the other.

What article have you read that discusses what happens after the video ended?

What article are you reading that doesn't?

 

[laughing dog]

So you are arguing that these officers were aware of the other's mind and actions, and deliberately agreed to cuff one suspect and not the other.

No.
Officers are trained to back up their partner. That's what she did.
Regardless of what she was thinking, that wasn't the time for a "You shouldn't do this. We're all gonna regret it." lecture.
Tom

One suspect is cuffed and the other is not. Both are subdued. There was plenty of effing time to discuss how they were going to treat the two suspects. Really, how fucking hard is this to understand?

 

[Toni]

No.
Officers are trained to back up their partner. That's what she did.
Regardless of what she was thinking, that wasn't the time for a "You shouldn't do this. We're all gonna regret it." lecture.
Tom

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread

That's what Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane thought. You see where that got them.

Edit: Link for reference.

The difference is that the incident at the NJ mall took place in a much shorter period of time compared with the incident with George Floyd. Thao et all had minutes to assess the situation, evaluate Chauvin’s actions and their own as well Floyd’s condition. The amount of time it took George Floyd to die plus a couple of minutes.

They held the black one for around 30 minutes and according to Joseph they didn't hold him at all. The similarity here is not about the length of time, the reference I was making was to officers who "just do their job" while another officer is breaking the law will be held responsible for it regardless of what people on this message board think.

Got it. I was only referencing what was shown on the video linked here. I should have also considered what happened after the video.

Obviously, even though the two boys were not treated the same during the time recorded on that video, they both should have either been held for parental pick up or released.

 

[TomC]

One suspect is cuffed and the other is not. Both are subdued. There was plenty of effing time to discuss how they were going to treat the two suspects. Really, how fucking hard is this to understand?

Are you talking about the video?
Or all the other claims made about what happened afterwards? The difference is important.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

One suspect is cuffed and the other is not. Both are subdued. There was plenty of effing time to discuss how they were going to treat the two suspects. Really, how fucking hard is this to understand?

Are you talking about the video?
Or all the other claims made about what happened afterwards? The difference is important.
Tom

Afterwards, one child remained cuffed and the other was never cuffed. If both had ended up uncuffed, I doubt there'd have been an OP about this.

 

[Rhea]

The male officer’s response was to grapple with the boy he was dealing with, shove him face down and to cuff him. Whether he would have dealt with Franco in the same manner: throw him face down and cuff him is a matter of conjecture. We don’t know.

We do, too, know.

The male officer handled both teens.

The male officer treated the white teen (the one on top, who was winning at the moment, the one who was actively punching) like this:
- grab and remove from pile and leave in standing position for female partner to handle.

The male cop handled the other teen (the one who was on the bottom at the moment, losing the fight and in defensive position) like this:
- Smash head into wastebasket and snash body onto floor and immediately cuff.

The woman cop also handled both teens.
She handled the white one (on top, throwing punches,) like this:
- grab teen, push to couch, Pat chest, turn back on him.

She handled the black teen (on bottom losing fight at the moment) like this:
- kneel on his neck when he is not even resisting.


We know exactly what each “would have done” with the other teen, because they did it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

He's there next to her with his wrists out to be cuffed. No one in their right mind would think she is considering risk of injury to herself or the teen at that point. Likewise, even after the Black teen is cuffed and the male officer is free to assist or detain the other, neither she implicitly accepts such assistance to cuff the teen nor the male officer initiates cuffing the other teen.

This. The "white" teen was clearly not a threat, there was no reason to do more.

 

[Toni]

He's there next to her with his wrists out to be cuffed. No one in their right mind would think she is considering risk of injury to herself or the teen at that point. Likewise, even after the Black teen is cuffed and the male officer is free to assist or detain the other, neither she implicitly accepts such assistance to cuff the teen nor the male officer initiates cuffing the other teen.

This. The "white" teen was clearly not a threat, there was no reason to do more.

The black teen was obviously not a threat, either.

I will mention that the white teen did NOT remain seated but got up and moved towards the two officers and the teen on the floor. I cannot help but think that if the white teen had been black and had gotten up from where he had been sat down and moved towards the officers, we would be having an entirely different kind of thread and responses. I wonder if either teen would still be alive.

 

[TomC]

. The "white" teen was clearly not a threat, there was no reason to do more.

Neither teen was a threat, as far as I could tell from the video.

In a moment of confusion, the cops might not have realized that. That's why what happened afterwards is more important to me, from the standpoint of racism.

What I see in the video is a male cop way overreacting and his more competent female partner backing him up for a few seconds. Reports about what happened after that are vague and inconsistent.
I don't have a firm opinion because there aren't any credible sources of information about what happened afterwards.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

He's there next to her with his wrists out to be cuffed. No one in their right mind would think she is considering risk of injury to herself or the teen at that point. Likewise, even after the Black teen is cuffed and the male officer is free to assist or detain the other, neither she implicitly accepts such assistance to cuff the teen nor the male officer initiates cuffing the other teen.

This. The "white" teen was clearly not a threat, there was no reason to do more.

The black teen was obviously not a threat, either.

I will mention that the white teen did NOT remain seated but got up and moved towards the two officers and the teen on the floor. I cannot help but think that if the white teen had been black and had gotten up from where he had been sat down and moved towards the officers, we would be having an entirely different kind of thread and responses. I wonder if either teen would still be alive.

I don't think we have enough to judge how the black teen would have reacted if not cuffed.

 

[Gospel]

What I see in the video is a male cop way overreacting

Why do you think he way overreacted and how is it that he happened to choose the black kid to way overreact on when the black kid was on the ground when he made first eye contact of the scene. You'd think an officer would see one person above the other as more of a threat at the scene. But he just tossed the white kid to the side and leaped on the black kid.

Edit: And he didn't need any fucking assistance to cuff the black kid because the black kid wasn't resisting. Yet both of these officers were stupid enough to do the whole knee trick on camera again like America needs more of that shit.

 

[Gospel]

I don't think we have enough to judge how the black teen would have reacted if not cuffed.

The same way he reacted before he was cuffed. Not resisting.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

He's there next to her with his wrists out to be cuffed. No one in their right mind would think she is considering risk of injury to herself or the teen at that point. Likewise, even after the Black teen is cuffed and the male officer is free to assist or detain the other, neither she implicitly accepts such assistance to cuff the teen nor the male officer initiates cuffing the other teen.

This. The "white" teen was clearly not a threat, there was no reason to do more.

The black teen was obviously not a threat, either.

I will mention that the white teen did NOT remain seated but got up and moved towards the two officers and the teen on the floor. I cannot help but think that if the white teen had been black and had gotten up from where he had been sat down and moved towards the officers, we would be having an entirely different kind of thread and responses. I wonder if either teen would still be alive.

I don't think we have enough to judge how the black teen would have reacted if not cuffed.

*BSOD*

 

[southernhybrid]

Why would anyone deny that this treatment wasn't due to the prejudice of the police, who perceived the young Black boy as a greater threat than the young whitesh boy, who by the way doesn't even consider himself white.

I haven't read every single post, so I apologize if somebody else has already mentioned this, but I looked for some information that would help me have a greater understanding of what was going on.

https://www.nj.com/somerset/2022/02...re-racist-to-cuff-black-teen-but-not-him.html

The way Joseph tells it, he was trying to prevent a fight from happening last Saturday at the Bridgewater Commons mall.


Instead, he ended up in a brawl that was caught on video and then went viral because it showed two Bridgewater police officers handcuffing only the other teen in the fight, who is Black.


Joseph, 15, is Colombian and Pakistani and says he’s “not white.” He has been referred to on social media and in some news reports as “white” because he has light colored skin. The high school sophomore said once he saw cops put the other teen, Kye, into handcuffs, he offered himself up to be detained, too.

Each officer grabbed a teen. The male officer took the Kye to the ground while the female officer sat Joseph on a couch before she assisted the other officer. Video shows Joseph offering his wrists to the officers to cuff. But he said they never did.


“I knew that was really bad,” Joseph said of the way officers handled the other teen. “I even offered to get handcuffed, I offered to get detained after Kye was detained, and they turned my offer down. I even asked they why they detained Kye and not me, and they said because Kye was resisting.”


The incident garnered responses from Gov. Phil Murphy, who said he was “deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment,” and acting state Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who reminded police about a directive banning “racially-influenced policing in New Jersey.


The police officers’ conduct is under investigation by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office.


The NAACP-NJ State Conference called on the department to remove the two officers involved in the incident pending the investigation.


Joseph said he hasn’t spoken with Kye since the fight. He also said he’s bothered by being labeled as a bully by Simms and Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney that Kye’s family has retained.


Since the fight, Joseph said, he’s been receiving ugly messages from people on social media. He’s been called a “racist white teen,” among other things, he said.


“Basically, people saying, ‘I know who you are, you better watch your back.’ There was one saying I should just kill myself,” Joseph said.


Both teens were banned from the mall for three years. Joseph had a job at the AMC movie theater in the mall, but said he now can’t work because of the ban. He believes the ban length was excessive for both he and Kye.


“Everyone goes to the mall, so I can’t hang out with a lot of people anymore,” he said.

So, even the white looking kid realizes that what the cops did was racist. And now, some assholes are threatening the white looking kid. What the fuck Is wrong with people? JFC! These are two young kids who had a misunderstanding, that led to a scuffle. If the police had acted more rationally and simply pulled them apart, sat them down and spoke to them, that would have been the end of it! Why do the police assume that a teen with darker skin is a threat, other than that they hold bias against young Black males! And, what, if anything can be done to change the bias in the system? Would more training help, or are some police simply hopeless.