New Jersey Mayor and NAACP pressure Bridgewater police to suspend officers

NAACP Pressures Bridgewater Police Dept. To Suspend 2 Officers In Mall Fight

Source: Douglas Sacha / Getty

The story surrounding the viral video brawl that popped off at Bridgewater Commons Mall in New Jersey is nowhere near out of the news cycle. As far as we’re concerned things are just getting started. According to ABC7NY, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the local NAACP chapter are putting a full-court press on the Bridgewater Police Department following the outrage that the officers on the scene were only interested in physically manhandling the Black teenager who was in a fight with a white boy. One would think that both parties involved in physical confrontation would be handcuffed until authorities figure out what was going on.

But nope. Just the Black kid.

Mayor Murphy didn’t parse his words in his statement about the incident:

“I’m deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment in the video,” he said. “We have to let the investigation play out. The appearance of what is racially disparate treatment is deeply, deeply disturbing, and it’s just another reminder that the progress we’ve made on the relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve…shows that our work is not done and we need to continue that.”

Something’s gotta give. What those cops did was not only bad police protocol (What if the white kid was armed? They completely turned their backs to him and didn’t even attempt to restrain his hands) but also wildly racist as the assumption was that the Black child was the imminent threat.

NWA was right back then and they’re still right today…