The Bridgewater Commons Mall is pictured on December 24, 2010, in Bridgewater TWP, New Jersey. | Source: Matt Rainey / Getty
The family of a Black teenager has reached an undisclosed settlement with a police department in New Jersey two years after his unlawful arrest at the Bridgewater Commons Mall.
Z’Kye Husain was on Thursday awarded a settlement for his 2022 arrest over an altercation recorded on video at the Bridgewater Commons Mall, in Bridgewater Township. Family members argued that race played a role when the then 14-year-old was arrested for fighting another teen, who is of Pakistani and Colombian descent.
Husain was standing up for a friend who was being bullied when he and the alleged aggressor, identified as Joseph, got into a heated altercation. Officers with the Bridgewater Police Department restrained Z’Kye by placing him in handcuffs while kneeling on him. Meanwhile, Joseph, who is not Black, remained seated nearby avoiding police intervention.
In the video footage of the fight, a voice from an unidentified person could be heard saying about Husain: “It’s ’cause he’s Black, racially motivated.”
On Thursday, Husain’s family and members of the Bergen County NAACP were present when the decision was announced.
“Z’Kye, I want you to know, your future is bright. Despite how those officers saw you, we see the God in you and we know you’re going to do great things,” Ben Crump, the family’s lawyer, said during the verdict, according to CBS News.
The attorneys representing the family have announced their intention to provide police training, sponsored jointly by their law firm and the NAACP to every police department in New Jersey.
Husain wanted the officers involved to be terminated from their positions.
After Husain’s arrest went viral, protestors gathered at the Bridgewater Commons Mall in February 2022 to voice their frustrations. Demonstrators said that the teen’s arrest was a clear case of racial profiling and they demanded that the officers involved be held accountable for their misconduct. Enrie Simms, Husain’s aunt, was present during the protest and claimed her nephew was defending a seventh grader when the fight erupted.
“He was defending someone even smaller and younger than him, a seventh grader, against high schoolers,” Simms revealed. “And he was met with not one but two knees in his back.”
At the time, the teen and his family said they wanted the officers involved to be fired.
“If they don’t know how to treat the situation and deal with the situation equally and fairly, then they shouldn’t be able to deal with the situation at all,” Husain told CBS2 in 2022.
During an interview with the outlet, Joseph expressed his surprise at the markedly improved treatment he received during the incident.
“I put my hands up like this and said you guys can detain me, but she said no because you were calm,” he recounted.
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