A teacher spied the black high school student using her phone in
math class and demanded she hand it over. She apologetically refused to do so when both the teacher and a school administrator asked, one witness told a local TV station Monday night.
The tackled teen has not been identified, but her defiance launched nation-wide outrage when video of the morning’s violent encounter with the school’s heavyweight resource officer went viral.

“She really hadn’t done anything wrong. She said she took her phone out, but it was only for a quick second,” her shocked classmate, Tony Robinson Jr., told WLTX-TV.
Robinson anticipated a showdown the moment Richland County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Ben Fields walked into the classroom at around 10 a.m., he said. He took out his own phone to record the whole thing.
RICHLAND COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
Deputy Ben Fields accepts an award from Lonnie B. Nelson Principal Karen Beaman for culture of excellence.
Deputy Ben Fields shows off his suit and sunglasses in his now-deleted Twitter profile.
His video of the now-famous assault shows Fields effortlessly flipping over a desk, and the silent girl with it, before dragging her across the room like a rag doll.
“I’ve never seen anything so nasty looking, so sick to the point that other students are turning away,” Robinson told the Columbia TV station. “They’re just scared for their lives. That’s supposed to be someone that’s going to protect us. Not somebody to be scared of.”
He believes Field intended to make a scene when he moved the girl’s laptop out of harm’s way and asked another student to move his desk.

“He could already tell what he was going to do,” Robinson added.
The frenzied sight of the girl’s desk smashing into another desk had Niya Kenny breaking down into sobs, the high schooler told WLTX-TV.
Her tears of protest ended in her arrest as well on Monday morning on a charge of disrupting school. She was released from custody on a $1,000 bond, according to the report.

Niya Kenny, left, was arrested Monday morning after protesting a Spring Valley High School resource officer assaulting her classmate, she said alongside her mother, Doris Kenny, pictured on the right.
“I couldn’t believe this was happening. A man used that much force on a little girl — a big man — like 300 pounds of full muscle,” Kenny told the TV station.
Her mother agreed.
“Who was really disturbing the school? Was it my daughter or was it the officer that came into the classroom,” Doris Kenny asked.
Fields, a 11-year veteran of Richland County Sheriff’s Office, has been a resource officer with Spring Valley High School since 2008.

He has been named in at least two lawsuits during his time with the sheriff’s office, including a case expected to go to trial next year accusing him of racial bias. The school has a predominantly African—American student body of 2,010 students.
Parents with the Richland Two Black Parents Association were not surprised by the leaked videos and believe it only confirms years of misconduct alleged by students.
Fields has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into the video that even his boss, Sheriff Leon Lott called “disturbing.”
District superintendent Debbie Hamm has asked Fields not step foot on any of its campus during the investigation.
Fields also patrols Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary School, only a one mile distance from the high school where the assault occurred.
No comments:
Post a Comment