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.
