Sheriff’s Lt. Curtis Wilson said in a statement Tuesday that Lott has followed up the request with a letter to the U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, Bill Nettles, asking for the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to investigate.
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Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation in South Carolina to investigate the confrontation between a school resource officers and a female high school student in Columbia. “The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence in order to determine whether a federal law was violated”.
Police in Columbia, S.C., have summoned the FBI to investigate the case of a police officer who body slammed a student in class while attempting to apprehend her.
“And that is where it started, right there”, the student said.
Students say the girl had her cell phone out in math class and refused to hand it over to her teacher.
“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”.
A South Carolina school resource officer is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after he was caught on tape violently flipping and dragging a female student out of her classroom chair. Columbia’s Mayor Steve Benjamin also called for an independent investigation, as did the school district’s Black Parents Association.
Richland School District Two superintendent Dr. Debbie Hamm released a statement, saying the district was deeply concerned about the videos and what they portrayed. She went on to say, “The District will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students…”
As for the student, she faces a charge of disturbing schools and was released to her parents after the incident, Wilson said.
If an officer decides to make an arrest, Houck said, he or she “can use whatever force is necessary”.
Curtis Lavarello, one of more than 46,000 people employed full-time as school resource officers, has seen this kind of scenario “played out hundreds of times, … and it’s one that can be handled so simply”.
Fields will not be back at any school pending the results of an investigation, Lt. Wilson said.
Long before the district announced those changes, a few civil rights and student advocates questioned whether the officer is the only one who is possibly at fault.
He said the officer probably shouldn’t have been called in to deal with the student in the first place. He’s banned from schools pending the outcome of the review, the sheriff’s department said.
The video shows Fields asking the girl to stand up.
Students witnessing the incident in their algebra class took out their cellphones. This can lead to overly harsh discipline and arrests for relatively minor infractions, they say, a problem that disproportionately affects students of color.
A second student was arrested for verbally objecting to the girl’s treatment.
“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. Hostin doesn’t think anything could have justified the deputy’s actions in the first place, but generally challenged the idea of law enforcement being involved in incidents like this one. “If a situation becomes violent or a student has weapon, the officer can and should intervene when needed”.
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The increased presence of these officers in schools has proved counterproductive in terms of public safety, and increases the likelihood that normal teenage behavior will be classified as criminal and reported to the police, according to The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform advocacy group.
