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

[Loren Pechtel]

Force was used against Franco and a reasonable person would believe he was not free to leave. The video footage shows the female officer touching Franco on the chest after he has been seated in a manner consistent with the officer declaring 'stay there'. In any case, Franco did not leave.

I don't know what happened after the video ended and how long either boy was detained by police. I would expect that they'd be detained until a parent or guardian came to collect them.

Yeah. I would not consider myself free to leave in his position.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Something bad happened here. I'm just not sure what it was. And I'm sure as hell not trusting modern media to tell me the truth about it.
Tom

What we do know for sure is that the police treated the black kid very differently from how they treated the white kid. It is possible there is a lawful reason for this disparity which doesn't involve racial bias, but its very unlikely in my opinion.

I can see a simple mechanical reason that might explain it:

In separating them there was that convenient bench that he got shoved into. That was face to face, the officer had a chance to recognize submission. The black kid was face down, thus no face to face contact and much less ability for an officer to recognize submission.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

From here:
Next to the Black teen was a couch on one side and that garbage bin/table whatever on the other and he was very much down to the ground and so his line of sight was very much blocked*...his vision was fixed on the person punching him and so he'd be expected to become aware of the police presence later on and be able to absorb that just a little later. When he went to punch upward but then a little into that or after the other teen was moved back onto the couch, he may have initially thought it was a reaction to his punch and had to absorb the police presence or that the other teen was moved through inference, but his very next thing to do was to get out of his unstable, uncomfortable position on his elbow and so he moved. As he moved, the male police officer tackled him, and this may have caught him by surprise as he may not have absorbed what was going on or why he was being tackled or even by whom within these fractions of seconds.
*
*View attachment 37401

I find this quite reasonable. The black teen very well might have given a bit of resistance to the police unaware they were the police rather than his opponent. Unfortunately, failure to identify the police tends to get the sort of response that would be more appropriate to someone deliberately attacking the police.

 

[Gospel]

Yeah, judging by some of the reasoning displayed in this thread accompanied by real life experiences. Life is harder being black in America. No doubt about it.

 

[laughing dog]

Yeah, judging by some of the reasoning displayed in this thread accompanied by real life experiences. Life is harder being black in America. No doubt about it.

Yes, apparently it is always reasonable to treat a black kid as potentially violent, even after it is clear he/she is not: the cuffs stayed on him.

 

[TomC]

Yeah, judging by some of the reasoning displayed in this thread accompanied by real life experiences. Life is harder being black in America. No doubt about it.

Life is harder than what?
Poor?
Queer?
Illegal?
Abused?

Tom

 

[Rhea]

Life is harder than what?

Harder than not being black.

 

[Politesse]

Yeah, judging by some of the reasoning displayed in this thread accompanied by real life experiences. Life is harder being black in America. No doubt about it.

That's not even reasonably in question. I've seldom had a serious conversation about life with my black acquaintances that didn't end with me going "well, shit." We have a lot of work to do as a society if we ever want to host true communities.

 

[Politesse]

Yeah, judging by some of the reasoning displayed in this thread accompanied by real life experiences. Life is harder being black in America. No doubt about it.

Life is harder than what?
Poor?
Queer?
Illegal?
Abused?

Tom

What the hell? It's not a fucking competition.

But if what you're asking who primarily benefits from the class subjugation of American Blacks, I think the answer to that question is pretty obvious, even if you are loathe to admit it.

 

[Gospel]

Yeah life is hard for all of what TomC mentioned..I'm not sure if his purpose of posting that list was to make mine easier. If it was, it doesn't fucking work.

 

[Gun Nut]

No, you misunderstand my post. Let me clarify

You are stuck on the notion that the cops are reacting to who they think the aggressor is.

Nope. I am not caring about who is "the aggressor." Not who started it. I agree that doesn't matter to the cops.

I am talking about who appears more dangerous. Who appears more likely to give the cops trouble. Who appears more capable of giving the cops trouble. Who, in others words, gives reasons for the cops to respond aggressively.

It's the stronger one. The more dangerous one. The one on top.

And I understand that.... it's emotional. People desire justice, but that is not the cops job.

Nope. I'm not arguing about justice. I'm arguing about what makes the cops decide to treat one teen like they are aggressive and dangerous and the other like they are not.

The guy on top might look like the aggressor at the moment in time the cops are arriving on the scene,

And as you said above, and here is what you wrote:

the fact that cops generally match the intensity level of what they are faced with,

Right. And how did they judge that "intensity"?
They had one teen on top. Intense.
One teen on bottom. Less intensity.


That's my argument. In direct response to your claim - that cops will match their reaction to the intensity they are faced with...

except they didn't

.. that it is completely irrelevant that the white kid appears to be totally in the wrong FOR APPEARING TO START THE FIGHT.

I never argued about who started the fight. I am not arguing that now. I am arguing which teen showed which INTENSITY when the cops arrived. What signals did the cops get to decide on their course of action.

They didn 't know who started it, or why. All they knew was that they had two boys, and one was fighting with more intensity - he was on top. And they DID NOT use that information to restrain the more intense fighter. They pulled him off.

This is about how cops react to people when they arrive on the scene if they FAIL TO STOP FIGHTING.

They both failed to stop fighting at the moment the cops laid their hands on them. The top boy was still actively punching when he was pulled off. The cops gave him time, with no hands on him to calm down. To "give up."

The bottom boy was not given that chance.

Why.

Questions of who started it and who is going to jail (if anyone) comes after everyone has calmed the fuck down and poses no threat to anyone.

What I saw in the video does not answer the question of what verbal exchange took place in the 3 seconds the fight was initially being broken up that caused the cops to treat the two boys differently.

If we can find out that the answer is "nothing relevant", then so be it... maybe racism... but I think you are dismissing out of hand that which we do not know, which could potentially explain what we saw, in the interest of sticking to a narrative.

No. I am talking about what the cops saw and how they reacted to it.

The cops saw a thing, you say they would then judge what they see - intensity - and react proportionately.

But they didn't; it had an inverse proportion. Why. Why did the cops violate everything you just said was reasonable?

right.... and I am talking about what the cops HEARD!!! HEARING.. WITH EARS... INFORMATION WE DONT HAVE!!!!

For fucks sake. I see a video of a person smiling and talking to the cops... the cop jumps on the person and cuffs them... WTF.. they were SMILING!!!!! Then you hear the audio and it turns out the persons was saying, "I have a gun and I am going to kill every last mother fucking one of you".... BUT THEY WERE SMILING!!!!!!

 

[Gospel]

For fucks sake. I see a video of a person smiling and talking to the cops... the cop jumps on the person and cuffs them... WTF.. they were SMILING!!!!! Then you hear the audio and it turns out the persons was saying, "I have a gun and I am going to kill every last mother fucking one of you".... BUT THEY WERE SMILING!!!!!!

Bruh, the video has audio. you can hear all the bystanders as clear as day, I'm certain that if the black kid was yelling something you'd hear it. The video even shows the police not giving him a chance so even if he was yelling when the police came into contact with him it didn't matter. So, what in the world are you on about?

 

[Gospel]

I'll say it again, white people have been using their imagination to kill black folks for a long time. They used to imagine they were the superior race and that the bible gave them black people as slaves, now they believe a black kid was yelling so that's why it took two officers to apprehend a nonresisting kid for resisting (more imaginary shit).

 

[Toni]

Something bad happened here. I'm just not sure what it was. And I'm sure as hell not trusting modern media to tell me the truth about it.
Tom

What we do know for sure is that the police treated the black kid very differently from how they treated the white kid. It is possible there is a lawful reason for this disparity which doesn't involve racial bias, but its very unlikely in my opinion.

I can see a simple mechanical reason that might explain it:

In separating them there was that convenient bench that he got shoved into. That was face to face, the officer had a chance to recognize submission. The black kid was face down, thus no face to face contact and much less ability for an officer to recognize submission.

The kid was face down because that’s the position he was put in by the police officer..

There was another bench right there just next to the planter. Both boys could have been sat on separate benches, looked in their faces by the officers. That did not happen.

We don’t know that the male officer consciously thought: “Black kid, he must be dangerous. I need to throw him down and cuff him.” But I do think that he reacted to Husain the way he did because of Husain’s skin color, because he read black kid as dangerous. Unconscious bias is still bias—and it is indeed dangerous.

 

[laughing dog]

Yeah life is hard for all of what TomC mentioned..I'm not sure if his purpose of posting that list was to make mine easier. If it was, it doesn't fucking work.

Gospel, you do not understand. The only group more oppressed than black people in the USA are white males. In fact, white men are the most oppressed group in Western Civilization. As a white male, you cannot imagine how hard it is for me to drag myself out of bed to face such a world every day. Between #BLM, CRT, radical feminists, and whomever else is out to get my kind, it is just exhausting.

 

[Gospel]

On a forum that seems to respect the roll of evidence I'd think people would base their opinions on the available evidence but it seems when it comes to black people imaginary evidence is king.

 

[laughing dog]

On a forum that seems to respect the roll of evidence I'd think people would base their opinions on the available evidence but it seems when it comes to black people imaginary evidence is king.

Imaginary evidence is easier to access and understand since it almost always conforms to one's ideology.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I can see a simple mechanical reason that might explain it:

In separating them there was that convenient bench that he got shoved into. That was face to face, the officer had a chance to recognize submission. The black kid was face down, thus no face to face contact and much less ability for an officer to recognize submission.

The kid was face down because that’s the position he was put in by the police officer..

There was another bench right there just next to the planter. Both boys could have been sat on separate benches, looked in their faces by the officers. That did not happen.

We don’t know that the male officer consciously thought: “Black kid, he must be dangerous. I need to throw him down and cuff him.” But I do think that he reacted to Husain the way he did because of Husain’s skin color, because he read black kid as dangerous. Unconscious bias is still bias—and it is indeed dangerous.

The cops are going to be trying to separate them. Given their position as the cops approach that means the "white" boy goes backwards, the black boy goes forward. You are trying to make this a racial issue when there are obvious non-racial reasons for the cops to act like they did.

 

[Gospel]

I can see a simple mechanical reason that might explain it:

In separating them there was that convenient bench that he got shoved into. That was face to face, the officer had a chance to recognize submission. The black kid was face down, thus no face to face contact and much less ability for an officer to recognize submission.

The kid was face down because that’s the position he was put in by the police officer..

There was another bench right there just next to the planter. Both boys could have been sat on separate benches, looked in their faces by the officers. That did not happen.

We don’t know that the male officer consciously thought: “Black kid, he must be dangerous. I need to throw him down and cuff him.” But I do think that he reacted to Husain the way he did because of Husain’s skin color, because he read black kid as dangerous. Unconscious bias is still bias—and it is indeed dangerous.

The cops are going to be trying to separate them. Given their position as the cops approach that means the "white" boy goes backwards, the black boy goes forward. You are trying to make this a racial issue when there are obvious non-racial reasons for the cops to act like they did.

What's the non racial reason for two officers kneeling on the back of this black kid not resisting? Can you find video footage from the entire history of America where American police kneeled on the back of a non black person that did not and is not resisting? That's quite a lot of Leeway to show proof this is normal police behavior no matter the race. Go for it. You'll have to sift through thousands of instances of brown people getting fucked up by police before you find it (if you do).

 

[Toni]

I can see a simple mechanical reason that might explain it:

In separating them there was that convenient bench that he got shoved into. That was face to face, the officer had a chance to recognize submission. The black kid was face down, thus no face to face contact and much less ability for an officer to recognize submission.

The kid was face down because that’s the position he was put in by the police officer..

There was another bench right there just next to the planter. Both boys could have been sat on separate benches, looked in their faces by the officers. That did not happen.

We don’t know that the male officer consciously thought: “Black kid, he must be dangerous. I need to throw him down and cuff him.” But I do think that he reacted to Husain the way he did because of Husain’s skin color, because he read black kid as dangerous. Unconscious bias is still bias—and it is indeed dangerous.

The cops are going to be trying to separate them. Given their position as the cops approach that means the "white" boy goes backwards, the black boy goes forward. You are trying to make this a racial issue when there are obvious non-racial reasons for the cops to act like they did.

I don't know about that. I honestly don't. I tend to think that if both officers had been like the female officer in this instance, both boys would have been separated and sat down on separate benches, scolded, made to wait for their parents, etc. etc. and nobody would have been on the ground face first with their hands cuffed.

But that isn't what happened. Maybe the male cop would have thrown a white kid to the ground face first and cuffed him, and the female officer would have been there backing him up. You're right: that could have happened.

Unfortunately for eveyrone, especially for black people, there have been far, far, far too many instances of police treating black children extremely harshly. I'm not advocating for any child of any color being treated harshly to make it on par with how black kids and black people are treated. I'm advocating for ALL people to be given the same level of benefit of the doubt that they aren't dangerous and can be treated like rational human beings. We all know that a lot of white people behave badly because of drugs and alcohol and mental illness and just plain evilness. In our country, we have an unfortunate, that is: tragic and infuriating and damaging and horrific past that involves treating people with skin that is not white like less than human. We have got to stop this.