Teen In Mall Fight Calls Cops 'Racist' For Arresting Black Boy But Not Him

The kids really are alright, but as usual, these cops are trash.

Source: picture alliance / Getty

Last week, BOSSIP reported on yet another viral video of crooked cops and their blatant bias against Black people when officers in Bridgewater, New Jersey broke up a fight between multiple teens at a mall and only arrested the one Black boy involved. The NAACP and NJ Governor Phil Murphy demanded an immediate suspension and investigation of the officers involved. Now NJ Advance Media reports the other boy in the video who wasn’t arrested for the fight is also speaking out and calling out the racist injustice.

According to the 15-year-old seen on camera fighting but not targeted and arrested by police, those cops should be held accountable for their obvious racism. Although multiple outlets, and most likely police, identified the boy as “White,” Umar Joseph Franco who goes by Joey, clarified that he has a Colombian mother and Pakastani father.

“I don’t understand why they arrested him and not me,” he said in an interview on Friday. “I say that was just plain old racist. I don’t condone that at all. Like I said, I even offered to get arrested.”

Joey explained his side of the events that led up to fight and brutal arrest in that viral video. He claimed the mall was buzzing with excitement and packed with teens even more than usual in anticipation of a a fight expected to happen later that night. He said he searched the mall to warn the rumored target before things got physical, but that teen never showed. When Joey confronted the seventh grader he believed to be instigating that fight, the Black eighth grader named  Z’Kye Husain intervened.

The video shows Joey exchanging words with Kye, who allegedly suggested they “step outside.” Joey doubled down saying he could fight both Kye and his younger friend. What started as an innocent but misguided attempt on the part of both boys, who didn’t even know each other, to keep the peace quickly went down the drain. Kye smacked Joey’s hand away from his face and the high school sophmore escalated with a push, and they both got carried away.

Two Bridgewater police officers, also expecting a fight that day, were on the scene in seconds to break up the fight and pull Joey from on top of his younger opponent. Kye was tackled to the ground by the responding male officer while the female officer escorted Joey to a couch, even though the latter was older, bigger, and the obvious agressor leading up to the fight and at the moment the cops arrived.

Then Kye, who just defended his even younger friend and himself against an older teen, had to fight for his life while a grown man violently wrestled the boy onto the ground and climbed on his back to cuff him. In yet another terrifying escalation reminscent of George Floyd’s last moments, the female officer jumped in to put her knee on Kye’s back even though the unarmed child isn’t visibly resisting beyond fighting to keep breathing.

Joey quickly realized that he had the complexion for protection and attempted to save the boy he was just throwing hands at moments earlier. He tried reason with the cops and deflect the gleeful violence both officers inflicted on Kye. Joey held his hands out to to face his fair share of the concequences, but they were too busy putting a Black boy in his place to care.

“I knew that was really bad,” Joey said about the cops’ agression and obvious targeting of the much younger Black teen. “I even offered to get handcuffed, I offered to get detained after Kye was detained, and they turned my offer down. I even asked they why they detained Kye and not me, and they said because Kye was resisting.”

Violently arrested a Black child for resisting arrest. It’s a tragic lie that never seems to go out of style for these incompetent savages. Fortunately, Kye’s family, the NAACP, and Joey are all on the same page about how wrong, racist, and violent those cops were.

“I didn’t see him resisting at all,” Joey said according to My Central Jersey. “Everyone is coming at me for no reason because I defended myself, and what the cops did to him was not my fault.”

Both kids know where they went wrong and did their best to make things right. Once again, the only villains in this story are rocking badges.