South Carolina Sheriff's Deputy Flips Student in Her Desk, Drops Her to the Floor, Drags Her Across the Classroom, Pins Her Down, Handcuffs Her and Arrests Her as Teacher and Assistant Principal (Also on the Public Sector Payroll) Watch and Defend the Brutal Attack

Go Directly to Jail: Typical Teens Face Police Instead of Principals

October 28, 2015

Takepart.com - What started as a typical high school math class ended with two misdemeanor arrests in a South Carolina on Monday. Viral video footage shows a female student being flipped in her desk and slammed to the ground by a school resource officer who then drags her to the classroom door before arresting her. A fellow student was so upset that she began crying and yelling—she was arrested, too.

Both girls were charged with misdemeanors under South Carolina’s “Disturbing Schools Law,” a statute that allows school resource officers to arrest students who disturb or interfere with the school environment. Advocates say the law has since been applied to criminalize kids who violate the adage that children should be seen and not heard.

“[The law] is so vague and broad that it lends itself to subjective and arbitrary application,” Victoria Middleton, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina told TakePart. “It was initially passed because of concerns about outside intruders, and is now being used against kids.”

The disturbing schools law was introduced in the 1970’s in reaction to agitation from anti-war organizers on college campuses during the Vietnam War, according to Mishi Faruqee, a juvenile justice reform advocate who has been working with Middleton to have the law repealed.

“The law has since been used to allow school resource officer in middle and high schools to arrest thousands of mostly African-American students,” Faruqee told TakePart. “It is one of the top charges against youth in South Carolina’s juvenile justice system.”

Disturbing schools is the third most frequent juvenile offense referred to the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, after assault and battery and shoplifting. While one third of South Carolina’s student population is black, black youth made up 66 percent of admissions to the juvenile justice system between 2013 and 2014.

Faruqee says South Carolina’s law is the most egregious example of laws that effectively funnel disruptive classroom behavior into the criminal justice system. Several other states also have laws that criminalize student misbehavior in the classroom, but the extent to which they are enforced varies. The “disturbing a lawful assembly” law in Massachusetts has repeatedly been used to arrest students who act out since implementation in x-year. A 2012 report on the criminalization of school discipline in Massachusetts cites arrests of students for bringing phones to school, swearing at resource officers, and failing to identify themselves between 2009 and 2012. In South Dakota, a “disturbance of school” law has similarly been applied to emotionally disturbed children and children of color.

Middleton noted that these laws disproportionately impact children of color, and children with disabilities. Students who are arrested at school are three times more likely to drop out than those who aren’t arrested, according to the ACLU, and students who drop out are eight times more likely to wind up in the criminal justice system. These numbers illustrate why it’s critical to avoid a criminal justice response to disruptive behavior when possible.

“Too often, these teachers in these schools are calling on the cops because they have a disruptive student in the classroom,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said at a press conference on Wednesday. “This is not a cop’s job.”

“We don’t need to arrest these students,” Lott continued, “We need to keep them in schools.”

The Elephant in the Classroom: Why Did South Carolina Educators Call the Cops?

October 29, 2015

TakePart - The viral video of an armed, uniformed school resource officer manhandling an African American student in a South Carolina classroom has spurred an intense debate about the presence of law enforcement in mostly minority schools—which critics say helps fill the school-to-prison pipeline.

But the snippet of video showing sheriff’s deputy Ben Fields roughing up the unidentified student—and Fields’ subsequent firing—misses the big picture and absolves the teacher and school administrator for calling in the cop in the first place.

Tyrone Howard, a professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and a specialist in race and education, says the incident is a textbook example of why teachers need more training in how to handle disruptive students. But he also says it underscores the need for a deeper understanding of racial bias, in African American teachers as well as white ones.

The arrest “was excessive and reprehensible, if you think about it,” said Howard, who was a classroom teacher before becoming an academic. As the arrest unfolded, “the teacher in the [video] clip I saw stood by and watched and didn’t intervene,” said Howard.

But the “important question,” Howard added, is “what those teachers are doing to prevent these issues in the first place.”

Camika Royal, a professor of urban education at Loyola University in Maryland, questioned whether the classroom teacher—identified as Robert Long, a veteran educator—did enough to defuse the situation.

“Instead of making her cell phone and/or her behavior the focus of his class, he could have told her he would deal with her after class,” Royal wrote in an email to TakePart. “Because of his choice not to let it go, to contact the administrator instead, he kept students from learning, and he disrupted the learning environment.”

In the classroom, wrote Royal, "power struggles with students rarely end well.”

The incident, which happened Monday at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, hit the national news when video of the student’s arrest surfaced on social media. When the teenager pulled out her cell phone in math class and ignored the teacher’s order to put it away, according to various reports, a school administrator asked the 16-year-old to leave; Fields was then called in.

The video shows the burly deputy flipping her chair and desk backward, body slamming her to the floor, dragging her to the front of the classroom, and then handcuffing her facedown. Other students in the class were appalled.

Fields was suspended, then fired on Wednesday from the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

The incident triggered a national debate over harsh methods and over-disciplining of kids in the classroom. According to SchoolDigger.com, Spring Valley High’s enrollment in 2014 was 50.8 percent black and 30.4 percent white. Studies show African American students are far likelier to face punishment—suspension, expulsion, even arrest—than are their white peers.

Howard said while the debates over discipline are valuable, they miss what should be the main target: ending the disproportionate punishment of black students through more effective training of teachers. That includes helping them learn to de-escalate classroom confrontations and understanding that teenagers are biologically impulsive and resistant to authority because their brains are still developing.

However, according to Howard, the training should also focus on “implicit bias”: the scientifically proved concept that even black or Latino teachers likely have some subtle negative feelings toward minorities, a factor that can affect decisions to punish a student.

While most teachers have the tools to avoid confrontations, “we need to rethink how our teachers are trained” to think about whether harsh discipline is really necessary, Howard said, particularly because 80 percent of the nation’s teachers are white. But most minority teachers serve in mostly minority schools, which tend to be underserved, often have the heaviest police presence, and have the highest rates of students suspended, expelled, or under arrest.  

“In that discussion, teachers of color are often left off the hook,” Howard said.

But Royal wrote that training, or lack thereof, isn’t the only factor in student-versus-teacher confrontations.

“That suggests this teacher wasn't trained in classroom management. He probably was,” she wrote. “This isn't just about training. This is about teachers learning to be humble and compassionate, teachers operating from a spirit of concern for students' learning and well-being instead of an attempt to control their behaviors.”

That mind-set, added Royal, “has to be chosen and developed by educators who believe their students are whole, evolving, complicated people who deserve respect—not children who are meant to be quiet and controlled.”

Video Allegedly Shows South Carolina School Resource Officer Aggressively Grabbing Student

According to Lt. Curtis Wilson, a spokesman for the Richland County Sheriff's Department, the instructor had asked the student "to leave the class several times." "The assistant principal was there as well," Wilson said. "Then the officer was called to actually have the student removed from that location. The student refused." This is where the video picks up, capturing Fields as he says, "You're either going to come with me, or I'm going to make you." The student doesn't budge. Fields tells her, "Come on, I'm going to get you up," and tries to pull her from the desk. The officer gets the student up only after she first crashes to the floor and is then flung across the room. CNN law enforcement analyst Harry Houck questioned why the officer was even called in to deal with the student in the first place. "Cops are at a school in the event a crime is being committed," he said. "Too often, these teachers in these schools are calling on the cops because they have a disruptive student in the classroom. This is not a cop's job." [CNN]

Teenage female half the size of a grown man, unarmed, & seated. I don't even know what there is to investigate. #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh

— Derek Minor #EMPIRE (@thederekminor) October 27, 2015

October 27, 2015

ABC News - Federal authorities and officials in South Carolina are investigating a videotaped confrontation apparently showing a school resource officer manhandling a South Carolina high school student.

Here is what’s known about the classroom incident:

The classroom confrontation

The video, which has gone viral on social media, apparently shows a Richland County Sheriff's Department school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, snatching a female student from her desk before he drags her across the classroom.

The video shows the man grabbing the student as she sits in her desk, eventually wrestling her out of the seat and to the ground.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said the girl was causing a disruption in the class.

The resource officer "asked her repeatedly to leave with him," Lott said, but "she refused. At that point he put her under arrest."

Students witnessing the incident in their algebra class took out their cellphones.

"I was scared, terrified," sophomore Tony Robinson said to ABC affiliate WOLO-TV in Columbia. "So that was my first judgment call; is get your phone out so that everything after this is recorded."

Another student, junior Niya Kenny, allegedly interfered, a decision that she said landed her in jail.

"I am traumatized," Kenny told WOLO-TV. "I could not believe this was going on. They got her out of the classroom. Then he came back ... he said, 'You're going to jail, too.' And he put me in handcuffs."

The school resource officer

The school resource officer was identified as Ben Fields, according to the Richland County Sheriff's Department. Fields joined the program in 2008 and received a Culture of Excellence award for proving to be an exceptional role model in 2014.

The school website lists Fields as the football team's defensive line coach and strength and conditioning coach.

The Richland County Sheriff's Office said Monday night Fields would be placed on administrative duties.

Fields is one of two resource officer's for Spring Valley High, according to the school district website. The district said it "contracts with the Richland County Sheriff's Department to provide School Resource Officers (SRO) throughout the district. Each SRO is assigned to respond to any facility without a full-time deputy in proximity to his/her primary assignment. These assignments are geographical so as to provide the most rapid response by SROs."

"All schools are instructed to call 911 first in the event of any emergency," the district said. "In doing so, the closest on-duty deputy would be dispatched in addition to the SROs."

Each high school in the district has two resource officers while each middle school, elementary school and alternative school has one officer.

The investigation

Sheriff Lott was "very disturbed" by it, the sheriff's office said.

"He has questions like everyone has – and he wants answers and once he has those answers he will address them," the sheriff's office said. "The Sheriff is asking for everyone to be patient as this is being fully investigated. 

"The Sheriff and the School District will take the appropriate action necessary once this investigation is complete – All SRO’s are at the schools for the safety of all students – these SRO’s are held to a very high standard," the sheriff's office added. "The Sheriff fully understands the seriousness of this incident."

The Richland Two School District Superintendent Debbie Hamm said the district is "deeply concerned," adding that the school administration is cooperating with authorities on an investigation of what happened.

"Student safety is and always will be the District’s top priority. The District will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students," she said in a statement. "Upon learning of the incident, school and district administrators began an investigation. We are working closely and in full cooperation with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department to conduct a thorough and complete investigation."

Local reaction

Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said he found the incident "wholly unacceptable."

"This needs to be dealt with quickly and transparently," Benjamin said in a Facebook statement, adding that this was not "CPD [the Columbia Police Department] or representative of policing that builds trust or confidence!"

Victoria Middleton, the executive director for the South Carolina branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "There is no justification whatsoever for treating a child like this. Regardless of the reason for the officer’s actions, such egregious use of force — against young people who are sitting in their classrooms — is outrageous. School should be a place to learn and grow, not a place to be brutalized."

"We must take action to address the criminalization of children in South Carolina, especially at school,” she added.

Federal involvement

Sheriff Lott called Dave Thomas, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for South Carolina, requesting an independent investigation, the sheriff's office said.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said: 

"The Columbia FBI Field Office, the [DOJ's] Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina have opened a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest of a student at Spring Valley High School. The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence in order to determine whether a federal law was violated. As this is an ongoing investigation, per Department of Justice policy we are unable to comment further at this time."

Videos taken by students and posted online show Fields warning the girl to leave her seat or be forcibly removed on Monday. The officer then wraps a forearm around her neck, flips her and the desk backward onto the floor, tosses her toward the front of the classroom and handcuffs her.

Here is the full sheriff's department statement:

"Sheriff Leon Lott is out of town attending a Law Enforcement conference -– he did see the video and was very disturbed by it. He has questions like everyone has -– and he wants answers and once he has those answers he will address them. The Sheriff is asking for everyone to be patient as this is being fully investigated.

"The Sheriff and the School District will take the appropriate action necessary once this investigation is complete – All SRO’s are at the schools for the safety of all students – these SRO’s are held to a very high standard. The Sheriff fully understands the seriousness of this incident.

"Dep. Ben Fields will be placed on administrative duties."

S.C. school officer Ben Fields' career marked with lawsuits, praise

A Spring Valley student named Aaron Johnson who says he was in the class sent me this account via Twitter direct message: The girl was asked by the teacher Mr. Long to leave the classroom and go to the discipline office, she ignored him, then an administrator came in and asked her if he needed to get the resource officer. She ignored him and then the officer came in. He asked if she was gonna go or if he had to make her go. Then he grabbed her and pulled her out of her desk and she fell on the ground with the desk still on her. He then threw her across the room and then got on top of her. Another student tried to stand up for her, which also led to her arrest. We cannot confirm that a second student was apprehended in the aftermath of the taped incident. [Update: Via Buzzfeed, the sheriff’s department confirms that a second student was arrested.] I asked Johnson about Fields’ reputation at the school and he said, “A few of my friends say he has a history of using aggressive force.” As for the student in the video, Johnson said, “All I know is she was really quiet and she transferred to our class.” [Gawker]

October 27, 2015

CNN - Depending on which documents you read, Ben Fields is either an outstanding school resource officer or a deputy once sued for using excessive force.

Within a few hours Monday, Fields went from a virtually unknown South Carolina law enforcement officer to the target of nationwide vitriol after a video showed him yanking a student from her desk, slamming her to the ground and throwing her several feet across the floor.

Court documents and a sheriff's department newsletter offer a study in contrasts.

Fields has not responded to CNN's request for comment. But here's what we know about the Richland County Sheriff's Deputy:

He was sued for allegations of excessive force

In 2007, a couple sued Fields, fellow deputy Joseph Clark and Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, alleging false arrest, excessive force, and violation of free speech rights in 2005.

According to the complaint, Carlos Edward Martin was driving home and got out of his car when Fields approached him and asked if he was the source of an excessive noise complaint that the officer was investigating.

Martin claimed that Fields "slammed him to the ground, cuffed him, began kicking him, and chemically maced him until his clothing was drenched and the contents of the can of mace was [sic] depleted," according to court documents.

When Martin's wife took pictures with her cell phone, Fields told a responding officer to confiscate her phone, according to the lawsuit.

But a jury ruled in favor of Fields.

  
In the image above, Richland South Carolina Sheriff's Deputy Ben Fields is seen arresting Carlos Martin in 2005. Martin had been in the Army stationed at Fort Jackson, S.C. Martin said the beefy officer "snapped" after he called him "dude," and slammed him on the ground. He began pepper-spraying the helpless veteran, but Martin said he was trained in the military to resist the chemicals. An entire canister of the stuff failed to disable Martin. "He became even more violent because I didn't react like most people would," Martin told the News. His wife at the time, Tashiana Rogers, witnessed the fracas, and ran outside to take photos of the violent encounter with her cellphone. That's when Fields called for his partner to "get her black ass," Martin said. The officer grabbed her phone and deleted the photos. Fields then called for backup. "I'm watching my wife get beat up in front of me, and there's nothing I can do about it," Martin said. The former medic, who spent 10 years in the service, said his encounter with the hulking officer lead to his divorce and discharge from the military. Fields said he didn't care that Martin, still in uniform, was a soldier, the former medic said. [Source]

Related: S.C. DEPUTY BEN FIELDS HAS HISTORY OF ALLEGED MISCONDUCT AND RACIAL BIAS

He faces another lawsuit

Fields is one of 10 defendants in another case, scheduled to go to trial in January.

In that lawsuit, former Spring Valley High School student Ashton James Reese claims he was unlawfully expelled from school in 2013. At the time, Fields was investigating alleged gang activity at the school.

Reese claimed several offenses in the suit, including lack of due process, negligence, negligent supervision and a violation of the right to public education -- as mandated by state law.

The jury trial is scheduled for January 27-29 in Columbia, South Carolina.

He has received accolades for his work with students

He was given a Culture of Excellence Award by a Richland County elementary school, where he also worked as a school resource officer in 2014.

"Ben has been working for the Richland County Sheriff's Office Department since 2004 and joined the School Resource Officer Program in 2008," a sheriff's department newsletter said.

"He is assigned to Spring Valley High School as well as Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary School, and has proven to be an exceptional role model to the students he serves and protects."

He's barred from schools for now

Fields has been placed on administrative leave and has been told not to return to school while his department investigates what happened.

Richland School District Two Superintendent Dr. Debbie Hamm said officials are working with the Richland County Sheriff's Department in an investigation.

As for the sheriff, Lott is aware of the video and "was very disturbed by it," his spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said.

"He has questions like everyone has -- and he wants answers and once he has those answers, he will address them.".

Fields is pictured here in 2014 receiving the Richland School District Two Culture of Excellence Award from the Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary School.

@studentactivism @a_standal They are cowards. I was a teacher and administrator. I don't need a cop for a frivolous matter of a phone.

— Doc Blue (@DrJP2011) October 27, 2015

Student Arrested Says She Was Standing Up for Classmate [Video]

October 27, 2015

WLTX - Niya Kenny, 18, is speaking out after she was taken into custody in her Spring Valley High School math class. She says she was standing up for her classmate who was being arrested by Student Resource Officer Ben Fields.

"I was crying, screaming and crying like a baby," says Kenny. "I was in disbelief."

"I know this girl don't got nobody and I couldn't believe this was happening," Kenny explained.

"I had never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl. A big man, like 300 pounds of full muscle. I was like 'no way, no way.' You can't do nothing like that to a little girl. I'm talking about she's like 5'6"."

Related Coverage:Video Surfaces of Incident at Spring Valley High School 

Kenny says her classmate was not participating and was asked to leave the room by her teacher. When she refused an administrator was called in and asked her to leave. She refused and Officer Fields was called in, asking her the same thing.

Kenny filmed a part of  the altercation on her phone. The six second video shows Officer Fields arresting the student.

"I was screaming 'What the f, what the f is this really happening?' I was praying out loud for the girl," says Kenny. "I just couldn't believe this was happening. I was just crying and he said, since you have so much to say you are coming too. I just put my hands behind my back."

Her mother Doris Kenny was shocked and upset when she saw the video.

"My child, and I'm not mad at her, she was brave enough to speak out against what was going on and didn't back down and it resulted in her being arrested," says Doris Kenny.

Her daughter was charged with disturbing schools.

"But looking at the video, who was really disturbing schools? Was it my daughter or the officer who came in to the classroom and did that to the young girl?"

#AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh Respect for authority from the distorted view of White privilege. @TimWise_Ebooks pic.twitter.com/5u24DhSnsE

— The Crisis Magazine (@thecrisismag) October 27, 2015

Rough Arrest Highlights How In-School Police Officers Are — and Aren't —Trained for Kids

October 28, 2015

Yahoo! Heath - Videos of school resource officer (SRO) Ben Fields flipping a student in her desk went viral this week, leading to his firing on Wednesday.

The incident reportedly began after the student, who has not been named due to her age, refused to put away her cellphone at the request of her teacher and a school administrator. Fields was called in to deal with the situation soon after.

While graphic and shocking to watch, this is not the first time an in-school police officer has used questionable methods to subdue young students.

In 2010, a Texas officer shot and killed Derek Lopez, 14, when the boy ran away after getting into a fight with another student. In November 2013, 17-year-old Noe Nino de Rivera spent 52 days in a medically induced coma after police used a Taser to subdue him when the teen tried to break up a fight between two female students.

In May 2014, Cesar Suquet’s family says he was repeatedly struck by an SRO with a nightstick after asking teachers to return his cellphone, which had been confiscated earlier in the day. And in January, a middle-school girl received 10 stitches —four of them internal — after she was beaten with a baton by an SRO. 

The presence of school resource officers in schools increased by 40 percent between 1997 and 2007, according to data released by the U.S Department of Justice. Those numbers may have grown dramatically in such a short period of time due to school shootings at Columbine (1999) and Red Lake Senior High School (2005). The Virginia Tech massacre, which claimed the lives of 32 people, occurred in 2007.

But police presence in schools escalated even more after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, in which 26 people were killed — the majority of whom were children. In 2013, the Department of Justice announced that it was allotting $45 million for 356 new school resource officers across the country. “In the wake of past tragedies, it’s clear that we need to be willing to take all possible steps to ensure that our kids are safe when they go to school,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a press release at the time.

There are anywhere between 14,000 and 20,000 school resource officers in the U.S. today, Mo Canady, executive director for the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), tells Yahoo Health.

While NASRO trains many of them, they do not train school resource officers in South Carolina. The training that all SROs receive in South Carolina is the same, Major Florence McCants, an instructor with the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, tells Yahoo Health. Fields underwent the same 40-hour training that other SROs receive in order to be a liaison between schools, communities, and law enforcement officials.

That training includes how to deal with students who are disabled, navigating gang issues and how to identify gang members, and learning about drugs in schools. Officers are also given insight into how a child’s mind works and how to apply their training based on the type of school that they’re in.

“A lot of it is that you learn and apply it as need be,” McCants says.

But SRO training doesn’t teach officers how to use defensive tactics with students, she says. Rather, they learn them from a 12-week training in the police academy.

NASRO takes a similar approach. Canady says it addresses conflict from a philosophical standpoint, but doesn’t specify actions that officers should take because “every department has their own standard training.”

As a result, McCants says, SROs may use “the same type of techniques that would be taught when dealing with adults.”

That’s a problem because adults and teenagers mentally process conflict in different ways, Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of Smart Change, tells Yahoo Health.

“In emotional situations, it can sometimes be difficult for teens to stop themselves from doing something that as an adult they would be much more effective at stopping themselves,” he says.

In this particular case, if the student were an adult, she may have weighed her options and decided it would be better to just listen to the officer — regardless of whether she agreed with his order. Instead, she refused, which Markman says is a “fairly common reaction” for a teenager.

Teenagers also view law enforcement and authority figures differently than adults, Markman says. He explains it this way: Children tend to view the world in black and white and are taught that all police officers are good and are there to protect them. Adults have a more balanced view and realize that, while there are great police officers, there are also some that aren’t so great.

But teenagers are still trying to figure it all out. “They’re realizing these oversimplified stories they were told as a kid aren’t true and are beginning to see the reality,” Markman says. As a result, they can have strong, almost rebellious reactions to police officers and authority figures in general.

“They go from thinking, ‘these people only care about me’ to thinking, ‘they don’t care at all about me,’” he says. “It becomes extreme in the other direction, and you can get these very strong reactions as a result.”

Teenagers are also not as afraid of police officers as past generations have been, clinical psychologist John Mayer, author of Family Fit: Find Your Balance in Life, tells Yahoo Health. “They know what powers police do or do not have,” he says. As a result, they’re more likely to be defiant when dealing with a police officer.

McCants says officers need to use their own judgment to try to figure out the best way to deal with each situation, adding that no two incidents are ever the same. “You apply the amount of force that is demonstrated by the person you are addressing,” she says. “Officers should always be one threat level above the aggressor.”

However, she isn’t ruling out that defensive training may become a part of the SRO program in the future. “We’re always adjusting our training to better meet the needs of the community,” she says. “We evaluate what’s going on in the nation as a whole and see if we’re addressing it properly.”

McCants also points out that, even if an officer is properly trained, he or she may not always follow proper protocol with their actions.

And, in this particular situation, that seems to be the case.

“I can’t say that’s the form of training that we do,” she says. “That’s a little different from what we’re training here.”