A video that shows police officers breaking up a fight between two teenagers, one black and one white, in a mall in the United States generated outrage due to the evident difference in the approach used by the agents and reignited the debate about police violence and structural racism in the country. .
In the images (see the video below), two agents arrive at the scene seconds after the fight starts. While a policewoman pulls the young white man and leaves him sitting on a sofa watching the scene, the black teenager is thrown to the ground and violently restrained by another agent, who presses his knees on the boy’s back. The two police officers then handcuff only the black teenager, under the eyes of cameras and other youths who witnessed the approach.
The video went viral on social media and was rebroadcast on major American TV stations. The fight and police action took place last Saturday (12) in Bridgewater, New Jersey. The images do not show the reason for the collision or what happened after the approach.
The local police department released a statement acknowledging that the video “angry members of the community” and saying it called for an internal investigation into the case. The statement asks other people who recorded the incident to send the material to the department.
In an interview with CNN, the handcuffed boy, identified only as Z’Kye, said that the other teenager involved in the fight, who was not identified, was bullying one of his friends. The interference of Z’Kye, who is 14 years old, would have started the fight.
The black teenager’s mother, Ebone, told the network that she sees no reason the officers could have been aggressive with her son and spared the white boy. “I hate to say this, but if it wasn’t racial, then why?” she asked. “Why is the other kid sitting around watching my son get humiliated and handcuffed? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Bridgewater Mayor, Republican Matthew Moench, declined to comment on the case, claiming that any claim would be inappropriate while the local prosecutor’s investigation is still ongoing.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Democrat, condemned the police action. “While the investigation is still gathering the facts of this incident, I am deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially unequal treatment in this video,” he wrote on social media. “We are committed to building trust between law enforcement and the people they serve.”
Lawyer Ben Crump, who defended George Floyd’s family in court, will now also represent Z’Kye’s family. Murdered by a white police officer during an approach in Minneapolis that was also filmed and went viral in 2020, Floyd has become a symbol of the anti-racist struggle in the USA.
According to Crump, in the case of Z’Kye, the police did not explain the reasons for the difference in approach.
“Why is the black boy found guilty and the white boy found innocent?” asked the lawyer, a famous civil rights activist in the US. In a statement released by his office, he added that Bridgewater officers assumed that, given Z’Kye’s skin color, a noble move on his part in defense of a bullied friend would “not even be into the realm of possibility.”
“We’re grateful that Z’Kye made it out of this incident alive. It’s no secret that dealing with the police in the US is more dangerous for black men — and teenagers — than it is for white men,” Crump said. “This is another example of the kind of racial bias that we need to root out our policing system. These officers need to be reprimanded and retrained to overcome the underlying bias that results in unequal — and often dangerous — treatment for people of color.”
