Arrest of girl who texted in class prompts civil rights case
|
| South
Carolina NAACP President Lonnie Randolph speaks a news conference about
the incident the occurred Monday at Spring Valley High School, Tuesday,
Oct. 27, 2015, in Columbia S.C. The Justice Department opened a civil
rights probe Tuesday into the arrest of a student who refused to leave
her high school math class, where Richland County sheriff deputy Ben
Fields was recorded flipping the girl backward in her desk and tossing
her across the classroom floor. |
COLUMBIA,
S.C. (AP) -- A girl who refused to surrender her phone after
texting in math class was flipped backward and tossed across the
classroom floor by a sheriff's deputy, prompting a federal civil rights
probe on Tuesday.
The sheriff said the girl
"may have had a rug burn" but was not injured, and said the teacher and
vice principal felt the officer acted appropriately. Still, videos of
the confrontation between a white officer and black girl stirred such
outrage that he called the FBI and Justice Department for help.
Richland
County Sheriff Leon Lott suspended Senior Deputy Ben Fields without
pay, and said what he did at Spring Valley High School in Columbia made
him want to "throw up."
"Literally, it just makes you sick to your stomach when you see that initial video. But again, that's a snapshot," he said.
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.
Lott
pointed out at a news conference that the girl can also be seen trying
to strike the officer as she was being taken down, but said he's focused
on the deputy's actions as he decides within 24 hours whether Fields
should remain on the force.
"I think sometimes
our officers are put in uncomfortable positions when a teacher can't
control a student," the sheriff said, promising to be fair.
Email, phone and text messages for Fields were not returned.
The
deputy also arrested a second student who verbally objected to his
actions. Both girls were charged with disturbing schools and released to
their parents. Their names were not officially released.
The
second student, Niya Kenny, told WLTX-TV that she felt she had to say
something. Doris Kenny said she's proud her daughter was "brave enough
to speak out against what was going on."
Appearing
on MSNBC Tuesday night, Niya Kenny said an administrator told her to
sit down, be quiet and to put her cellphone away. She refused.
"'This
is not right. This is not right,'" Kenny recalled saying in the
classroom. "'I can't believe y'all are doing this to her.'"
Kenny said Fields arrested her and handcuffed her inside the classroom.
Lt. Curtis Wilson told The Associated Press in an email to "keep in mind this is not a race issue."
"Race
is indeed a factor," countered South Carolina's NAACP president, Lonnie
Randolph Jr., who praised the Justice Department for agreeing to
investigate.
"To be thrown out of her seat as
she was thrown, and dumped on the floor ... I don't ever recall a female
student who is not of color (being treated this way). It doesn't affect
white students," Randolph said.
The sheriff,
for his part, said race won't factor into his evaluation: "It really
doesn't matter to me whether that child had been purple," Lott said.
Tony
Robinson Jr., who recorded the final moments, said it all began when
the teacher asked the girl to hand over her phone during class. She
refused, so he called an administrator, who summoned the officer.
"The
administrator tried to get her to move and pleaded with her to get out
of her seat," Robinson told WLTX. "She said she really hadn't done
anything wrong. She said she took her phone out, but it was only for a
quick second, you know, please, she was begging, apologetic."
"Next,
the administrator called Deputy Fields in. ... He asked, 'Will you
move?' and she said 'No, I haven't done anything wrong,'" Robinson said.
"When
I saw what was going to happen, my immediate first thing to think was,
let me get this on camera. This was going to be something ... that
everyone else needs to see, something that we can't just let this pass
by."
Districts across the country put officers
in schools after teenagers massacred fellow students at Columbine High
School in Colorado in 1999. Schools now routinely summon police to
discipline students, experts say.
"Kids are
not criminals, by the way. When they won't get up, when they won't put
up the phone, they're silly, disobedient kids - not criminals," said
John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil
liberties and human rights organization.
Police
should guard doors to "stop the crazies from getting in these schools,"
Whitehead said, but "when you have police in the schools, you're going
to run into this - having police do what teachers and parents should
do."
The National Association of School
Resource Officers recommends that schools and police agree to prohibit
officers "from becoming involved in formal school discipline situations
that are the responsibility of school administrators."
At a school board meeting Tuesday night, parents spoke out about the arrest.
"This
is not a race issue," said Rebekah Woodford, a white mother of two
Spring Valley graduates and one current student. "This is, 'I want to be
defiant and not do what I'm told.' ... The child is the one who can
choose what to do."
School Superintendent
Debbie Hamm said "the district will not tolerate any actions that
jeopardize the safety of our students." School Board Chairman Jim
Manning called the deputy's actions "shamefully shocking."
Fields,
who also coaches football at the high school, has prevailed against
accusations of excessive force and racial bias before.
Trial
is set for January in the case of an expelled student who claims Fields
targeted blacks and falsely accused him of being a gang member in 2013.
In another case, a federal jury sided with Fields after a black couple
accused him of excessive force and battery during a noise complaint
arrest in 2005. A third lawsuit, dismissed in 2009, involved a woman who
accused him of battery and violating her rights during a 2006 arrest.
officials admitted, at a city council hearing, that they did not do a
great job of helping residents harmed by a June water main break in West
Philadelphia, but they still oppose a bill that would dictate how
similar emergencies are to be handled.
