Videos of a school resource officer aggressively removing a female student from a classroom in South Carolina have brought criticism from a number of groups.
Multiple cell phone videos, some shown below, capture a violent moment when a school resource officer in Columbia, S.C., flipped a seated student and dragged her out of her desk in order to make an arrest on Oct. 26.
The footage has prompted a civil rights investigation by the FBI Field Office and other federal authorities while the school district said it is “deeply concerned” by the incident in a statement, according to wltx.com.
The SRO, Deputy Ben Fields, has been fired, authorities announced Oct. 28. The head of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP argued Fields should be charged with assault, according to NBC News.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose agency is in charge of the school resource officer program, requested the federal investigation after saying he was disturbed by the footage he saw of the incident. Lott said he didn’t want the community thinking there was a conflict of interest in the investigation.
Deputy Fields has been sued before, according to Lott, although a jury ruled in his favor in those cases.
The student in the video was charged with disturbing schools after refusing to leave the classroom. Another student in the class, who was also charged, said she was just trying to defend her classmate.
