A video has gone viral that shows two New Jersey cops tackling and pinning down a Black teen with their knees while allowing the White teen to sit on a couch untouched after the two teens fight inside a mall.
The flagrantly disparate treatment of the Black and White teens by the Bridgewater Police Department has incited outrage across the country and has spawned multiple investigations on the local, county and state levels.
According to a video obtained by CBS News, two teens got into a verbal altercation and then punches began flying inside a mall in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey, which is 44 miles west of New York.
Police quickly respond just as the White teen is on top of the Black one and appears to be winning the fight. However, the male and female police officers pull the White teen off and direct him to a couch. The male officer immediately puts the Black teen on his stomach, places his knee in his back and handcuffs him. The female officer, fresh off directing the White teen to the couch, then assists the male officer by placing her knee on the Black teen’s neck to ensure complete immobilization during the process of handcuffing him.
“It’s cause he’s Black, racially motivated,” a female voice can be heard saying in the following video that is hard to watch.
The Bridgewater Mall Fight is the clearest example of how police actively use race as a shorthand for who they perceive as a threat.
See for yourself. pic.twitter.com/ThJPQFNEzO
— Pastor Ben, Church of Antifa (@BenjaminPDixon) February 16, 2022
The fact that the White teen was allowed to sit and watch while the two cops incapacitated the Black one has sent shock waves of rage throughout the Black community and has shaken up the state’s political hierarchy. Even the White teen, whom WGNTV identified as Joey, said later that he was shocked he wasn’t also handcuffed.
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