The way Joseph tells it, he was trying to prevent a fight from happening last Saturday at the Bridgewater Commons mall.
Instead, he ended up in a brawl that was caught on video and then went viral because it showed two Bridgewater police officers handcuffing only the other teen in the fight, who is Black.
Joseph, 15, is Colombian and Pakistani and says he’s “not white.” He has been referred to on social media and in some news reports as “white” because he has light colored skin. The high school sophomore said once he saw cops put the other teen, Kye, into handcuffs, he offered himself up to be detained, too.
Instead, the officers sat him down on a couch, the video shows.
“I don’t understand why they arrested him and not me,” said Joseph, interviewed Friday by NJ Advance Media. “I say that was just plain old racist. I don’t condone that at all. Like I said, I even offered to get arrested.”
NJ Advance Media is identifying both teens only by their first names because they are juveniles.
RELATED: Protesters gather at Bridgewater PD over police treatment of Black teen during mall fight
According to Joseph, last Saturday evening began with rumors that a group of teens planned to attack another boy that night at the mall. Long considered a hangout for local teens, Bridgewater Commons was bustling with more kids than normal, Joseph said, in anticipation of a confrontation.
Joseph wandered the mall looking for the target to warn him, he said, but that kid never even showed up. Instead, Joseph confronted another teen, a seventh grader, who Joseph said had planned to instigate the rumored fight. The seventh grader’s friend, Kye, an eighth grader, stepped up.
Joseph and Kye exchanged words, Joseph said — Kye suggesting they “go outside,” according to Joseph, and Joseph saying he could beat up Kye and his friend — before the fight broke out between them. Video shows that Joseph pointed at the Kye, who swatted his hand away, before Joseph pushed Kye with both hands. From there, the two teens traded blows, scuffled and fell over mall furniture.
At a rally on Saturday outside the Bridgewater Police Department to protest the officers’ conduct, Kye’s aunt, Enrie Simms, said Joseph was the “aggressor” and called him a “bully.” Joseph denied bullying Kye.
Just seconds after Joseph and Kye began fighting, two Bridgewater police officers, who were stationed at the mall because the department had also heard rumors about an impending fight, intervened. When they arrived, Joseph was on top of the other teen.
Each officer grabbed a teen. The male officer took the Kye to the ground while the female officer sat Joseph on a couch before she assisted the other officer. Video shows Joseph offering his wrists to the officers to cuff. But he said they never did.
“I knew that was really bad,” Joseph said of the way officers handled the other 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.”
The incident garnered responses from Gov. Phil Murphy, who said he was “deeply disturbed by what appears to be racially disparate treatment,” and acting state Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who reminded police about a directive banning “racially-influenced policing in New Jersey.
The police officers’ conduct is under investigation by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office.
The NAACP-NJ State Conference called on the department to remove the two officers involved in the incident pending the investigation.
Joseph said he hasn’t spoken with Kye since the fight. He also said he’s bothered by being labeled as a bully by Simms and Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney that Kye’s family has retained.
Since the fight, Joseph said, he’s been receiving ugly messages from people on social media. He’s been called a “racist white teen,” among other things, he said.
“Basically, people saying, ‘I know who you are, you better watch your back.’ There was one saying I should just kill myself,” Joseph said.
Both teens were banned from the mall for three years. Joseph had a job at the AMC movie theater in the mall, but said he now can’t work because of the ban. He believes the ban length was excessive for both he and Kye.
“Everyone goes to the mall, so I can’t hang out with a lot of people anymore,” he said.
Ultimately, Joseph said, he wishes he wouldn’t have fought Kye.
“I wish I would have been the bigger man and walked out,” he said.
As for the cops, he reiterated, “That was plain racist.”
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Josh Solomon may be reached at jsolomon@njadvancemedia.com.