A white sheriff’s deputy in South Carolina was fired Wednesday after county officials concluded he had acted improperly when, in a videotaped confrontation, he dragged and then threw a female African-American student across a high school classroom this week.
The deputy, Ben Fields, was dismissed two days after the episode at Spring Valley High School, where students recorded an encounter that spread quickly across social media and became a vivid reminder of concerns about the treatment of black people by law enforcement officers.
“He picked a student up, and he threw the student across the room; that is not a proper technique,” Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County said at a news conference in Columbia, where he told reporters, “Deputy Ben Fields did wrong this past Monday, so we’re taking responsibility for that.”
The Justice Department is also conducting a civil rights investigation that could lead to criminal charges against Fields, who was assigned to Spring Valley as a school resource officer.
The deputy’s dismissal came after department officials conducted an internal review that, according to the sheriff, found that Fields had used a maneuver that violated the agency’s training and procedural standards. But Lott also criticized the student, a sophomore, in harsh tones for “having started this whole incident with her actions.”
Fields, who could not be reached for comment, was called to an Algebra 1 class Monday morning after, according to witnesses and law enforcement officials, the student refused her teacher’s requests to stop using her cellphone. After the student refused to leave the classroom, Fields forced her from her desk by flipping it before he pulled and threw her toward the front of the room.
“He’s sorry that this whole thing occurred,” said Lott, who said he had spoken to Fields. “It was not his intent. His intent was not to do anything that brought discredit on this Sheriff’s Department or him or that school. He tried to do his job, and that’s what he feels like he did. He tried to do his job, and it happened very quickly.”
The sheriff said that Spring Valley officials who witnessed the episode had supported Fields. Still, he described the decision to fire the deputy as one that “was very evident.”
Fields had been a subject of previous lawsuits that raised questions about his behavior. At least one of the cases was decided in his favor, and another was pending. In addition to his law enforcement work at Spring Valley, Fields was a football coach.
Lott said he expected that the student, who was arrested on a charge of disturbing the school, would still face prosecution. A lawyer for the student did not respond to a message Wednesday.
In a statement on Wednesday, Debbie Hamm, the superintendent of the school district that includes Spring Valley, thanked Lott for a “swift response.”
“We know important work is ahead of us as we thoughtfully and carefully review the decision-making progress that may lead to a school resource officer taking the lead in handling a student disruption,” the superintendent said. “Conversations that have already started will continue around how we work with the sheriff’s department on improvement and coordination of our work as educators and their work as law enforcement officers.”
