Outrage over Black teen handcuffed after mall fight while White teen watches [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Outrage sparks after a video of a mall fight between a Black teen and a White teen has gone viral.
• New Jersey police officers handcuffed and pinned down the Black teen on the floor while the White teen was left to sit on a couch.
• The police response has sparked an internal investigation.

New Jersey police officers are being criticized after a video of a mall fight between a Black teen and a white teen has gone viral. Two officers handcuffed and pinned the Black teen to the floor while the White teen was given a softer treatment and watched from a couch.

The fight occurred Saturday at Bridgewater Commons.

In the video, the teens can be seen arguing with each other before things turned physical and the two exchange punches.

Two officers from the Bridgewater Police Department arrived seconds later and pulled the White teen away from the other boy and pushed him onto a nearby couch.

With the Black teen already on the floor, one of the police officers pins him down and places his knee on the boy’s back.

The female officer then leaves the White teen alone and joins the male cop, the video shows. She places a knee near the back of the Black teen’s neck as they handcuff him.

While the two cops are subduing the Black teen, the White boy can be seen standing up and watching.

“Yo, it’s ’cause he’s Black. Racially motivated,” a person can be heard saying.

The Black teen, identified as Kye, told NBC News in an interview that he confronted the other boy, who had been bullying his friend.

Kye’s mother slammed the police response.

“It doesn’t take two cops to hold a 14-year-old boy down who’s not resisting, while the other boy is just kind of going free and still going off on my son. It just doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement posted to Twitter that he was “deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment in this video.”

In a Monday Facebook post, the Bridgewater Police Department announced that an internal probe would be conducted.

Commenters to the department’s post voiced outrage at how the officers handled the situation.

“We want an independent investigation. If we are going to restrain youth, both should have been restrained. Blackness is not more threatening,” one person said.

Source: New York Post