‘Officer Slam’ video teaches a lesson
In the latest viral video showing a police officer using excessive force, a white sheriff’s deputy serving as a school resource officer flips a black, female South Carolina high school student out of her desk, tosses her to the front of the classroom and pins her face down as he handcuffs her.
The girl’s offense? She used her mobile phone during a math test and refused to leave the room after her teacher cited her. Once, that defiance would have landed a student in detention. This time, it sent one airborne and landed her in the front of the classroom – and all over the Internet.
The violence of the scene is matched by the irony of the location. Though it happened in a classroom, it was about how some officers refuse to learn. After so many videos showing police using excessive force, after all of the complaints, protests, media coverage and, in some cases, criminal charges against officers, some officers still revert to violence as a first option.
The officer in the classroom video, Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields, was fired Wednesday and is now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation. His history shows he has been particularly hard to reach. Before tipping the desk, he already was the subject of excessive force complaints outside of school settings. In school, students reportedly referred to him as “Officer Slam.” He’s also a defendant in a federal lawsuit accusing him of targeting African-American students with false allegations of gang membership that is set for trial in January.
But this case isn’t only about one hard-headed deputy. It also reflects obtuseness on the part of his superiors who thought he was temperamentally suited for police work, especially in a school.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said that Fields used an unacceptable “maneuver” but that the student was still to blame for the incident. She has been charged with disrupting school, a misdemeanor.
“The student was not allowing the teacher to teach and the students to learn. She was very disruptive, she was very disrespectful,” Lott said in a televised news conference. “She started this.”
Fields’ actions are about much more than getting tough with a defiant student. They are about a mentality that needs to be rooted out of law enforcement.
On the day after the classroom incident, a prosecutor announced that an another police officer in South Carolina will not face criminal charges for fatally shooting a 19-year-old who was fleeing from a drug deal sting operation.
Seneca police Lt. Mark Tiller said he shot Zachary Hammond because Hammond tried to run him over. But a newly released dashcam video shows Hammond’s car passing the officer as he opened fire.
The case has received less attention because both the officer and suspect were white, but it still demonstrates a persistent culture of excessive force and official tolerance.
The student who took the classroom video, Tony Robinson, summed up the lesson he learned that is instructive for police as well. He said a police officer is “supposed to be somebody who is going to protect us, not somebody we’re going to be scared of.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 6:38 PM with the headline "‘Officer Slam’ video teaches a lesson."