Month: October 2015

(CNN) — Even without the full context, even without knowing what happened beforehand, the video is appalling.

It shows a South Carolina school resource officer yanking a student from her desk, causing her to fall backward in her chair. He then throws her several feet across the floor.

CNN Video

A violent encounter between a student and officer at a South Carolina High School

A school district in South Carolina is investigating the actions of a school resource officer after video circulated showing him violently removing a student from her desk.

Other students sit silently, with one student covering his face with his hand.

But the outrage was raucous on social media, with some calling for the officer’s firing.

A violent confrontation

The incident started when a teacher at Spring Valley High School in Columbia told the student to leave the classroom, CNN affiliate WIS reported. When the student refused, the school resource officer — Richland County Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Fields — was called in.

It’s not clear what happened immediately before the cell phone video starts recording. But when it does, the school resource officer is heard telling the student to get up from her desk.

“You’re either going to come with me, or I’m going to make you,” he says.

The student doesn’t budge. Fields tells her, “Come on, I’m going to get you up,” and tries to pull her from the desk.

She falls backward in her chair, but the officer doesn’t stop. He lifts her body slightly off the ground and hurls her several feet across the room.

David Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the deputy’s actions seem unjustifiable.

“It literally makes no sense, as I’m laooking at it, why he would escalate to that point — pick her up, pick up the chair she’s in, the desk she’s in, and toss her,” Klinger said.

“There may be some logical explanation, but I can’t see it.”

Shocked Twitter users couldn’t understand it, either.

“I don’t care what this kid supposedly did. She’s a kid,” Charles Clymer tweeted. “Did she threaten his life? No? End of discussion.”

Julia Carmel wondered what would have happened if there was no video footage.

“When a cop can be as violent as the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh video in front of classroom audience, I fear what he’d do w/ nobody watching,” she tweeted.

Sheriff ‘very disturbed’ by video

Sheriff Leon Lott saw the video and “was very disturbed by it,” department spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said.

“He has questions like everyone has — and he wants answers and once he has those answers, he will address them,” Wilson said.

Fields has been placed on administrative duties. The school resource officer will not return to school pending an investigation by the department.

But Stephen Gilchrist of the Richland Two Black Parents Association said he wants an independent investigation.

As for the student, she faces a charge of disturbing schools and was released to her parents after the incident, Wilson said. He said another female, who might not be visible in the footage, was also arrested for disturbing schools.

No one was injured, the sheriff’s department said.

School board chair also stunned

James Manning, chairman of the board of trustees for Richland School District Two, said he was alarmed by what he saw.

“I have watched the video several times and there is no doubt that the video is extremely disturbing,” he said in a statement.

“As the parent of a daughter in Richland School District Two I can assure you that we are taking this matter very seriously. The district superintendent has been in constant contact with the Richland County Sheriff to express our concern over this matter and the district has banned the deputy in question from all District Two property.”

Analyst: The officer was within his rights

CNN law enforcement analyst Harry Houck said while the video “looks really bad,” the officer was legally allowed to use force on the student.

“Yes, he can do that because you failed to comply,” said Houck, a former New York police detective. “You are under arrest, you’re failing to comply now. So the officer can use whatever force is necessary to effect an arrest.”

He said the officer probably shouldn’t have been called in to deal with the student in the first place.

“Cops are at a school in the event a crime is being committed,” he said.

“Too often, these teachers in these schools are calling on the cops because they have a disruptive student in the classroom. This is not a cop’s job.”

Officer’s career marked with lawsuits, praise

Fields did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment Monday night. But court documents and a sheriff’s department newsletter offer a study in contrasts in his career.

The officer was a subject of two lawsuits in the past decade.

In the first case, Fields was accused of excessive force and battery in a 2007 lawsuit. A jury ruled in favor of the officer.

The second case is scheduled to go to trial in January. Fields is one of several defendants listed in a suit filed by a student against the school district over his expulsion.

Fields has also received commendations for his work in schools. He was given a Culture of Excellence Award by a Richland County elementary school where he worked as a school resource officer in 2014.

“Ben has been working for the Richland County Sheriff’s Office Department since 2004 and joined the School Resource Officer Program in 2008,” a sheriff’s department newsletter said.

“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.”

CNN’s Sarah Aarthun, John Newsome, Tina Burnside, Chandler Friedman, Joseph Netto, Don Lemon and Devon Sayers contributed to this report.

(CNN) — The University of Mississippi has removed the state flag from campus, according to a university statement issued Monday.

The move comes after student senators voted 33-15 with one abstention last week to ask the school administration to furl the banner, which includes the Confederate battle emblem in its upper left corner.

CNN Video

Where the Confederate flag is still flown

Despite the University of Mississippi’s removal of the state flag from the campus, the Confederate battle flag can still be found displayed across the country.

“University of Mississippi Police Department officers lowered and furled the state flag in a Lyceum Circle ceremony as the campus opened Monday morning,” a school statement said. “The flag will be preserved in the University Archives along with resolutions from students, faculty and staff calling for its removal.”

Like many students and observers, Buka Okoye, president of the school’s NAACP chapter, had the impression that the school wouldn’t act on the student senators’ vote until a new chancellor was appointed. The NAACP was in the process of organizing a march in two weeks to pressure the university administration to take down the flag immediately. He was “shocked” to learn the school had removed the banner Monday, he said.

“It was huge that the university came on the right side,” he said. “That was huge for me. It really shows me how much the university has progressed.”

He is proud that his school has sent the message that it wants to “distance itself from Confederate iconography in general,” and while it certainly doesn’t mean the end of racism, it’s another step in taking down the structures that support racism, he said.

The next step for him and the NAACP chapter is to pressure the university to do something about the obelisk honoring “Confederate dead” that is located in the area of campus known as The Circle, where the state flag flew. The monument has been there since 1906.

Elation, disappointment

Allen Coon, a student senator and president of the College Democrats who was at the forefront of the fight to take down the flag, told CNN he, too, was surprised and elated by the decision.

“They didn’t announce anything. They did it early this morning,” he said. “The leadership acted swiftly, and despite the opposition from the governor, who two days ago said college students act emotionally, they took it down. It’s exciting.”

Another student senator, Andrew Soper, who organized a petition that drew more than 1,800 signatures (at least 1,500 of which came on the day of the vote or after the vote) urging Ole Miss to keep the flag on campus, said he was disappointed to see the flag taken down.

“I think it’s the wrong move. They should have done it through the state of Mississippi. They didn’t do it the right way,” he said.

‘A flag that speaks to who we are’

Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks, who called for the state to change its flag in June, applauded the civility with which student senators came to their decision, saying, “Their respect for each other, despite genuine differences of opinion, was an inspiration to us all.”

“I understand the flag represents tradition and honor to some. But to others, the flag means that some members of the Ole Miss family are not welcomed or valued,” he said.”Our state needs a flag that speaks to who we are. It should represent the wonderful attributes about our state that unite us, not those that still divide us.”

Confederate tributes have come under increased scrutiny in the South since the killings of nine African-Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June. Shooter Dylann Roof apparently revered the flag as a symbol of white supremacy.

In that state, the Confederate banner that flew on the Capitol grounds in Columbia was taken down on July 10, less than a month after the shootings.

Many Mississippi cities furl the flag; some keep it flying

The vote by the Ole Miss student senators follows a decision by aldermen in Oxford, where Ole Miss is located, to remove the flag from city property in August. That was around the same time actor Morgan Freeman, author John Grisham, musician Jimmy Buffett and others signed a letter calling on the state to come up with a new flag.

Other Mississippi cities — including Macon, Columbus, Grenada, Magnolia, Hattiesburg, Clarksdale, Starkville, Yazoo City and Greenwood — have voted or issued executive orders to remove the state flag from city property since the Charleston shooting. (Conversely, the cities of Petal and Gautier have voted since the massacre to keep the flag flying.)

The City Council in the state capital, Jackson, which hasn’t flown the state flag on city property in more than a decade, voted in July to urge the state to create a new flag, CNN affiliate WAPT reported.

Also taking action since Charleston were Leflore County, which took down the flag this summer, and the Gulf Coast Business Council and Mississippi Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce, both of which said they’d endorse a new flag without the Confederate canton in the corner.

The Ole Miss vote is also in line with the stances of three other public state universities that don’t fly the flag on their campuses: Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Alcorn State University.

Mississippi State University’s Faculty Senate voted before a 2001 statewide referendum to support efforts to change the state flag. Delta State University and the University of Southern Mississippi, too, have issued statements calling on the state to redesign the banner.

The Mississippi University for Women is the only state university that has not issued a statement or removed the flag, but an article last month in the school’s weekly newspaper reported that faculty and school leaders are discussing the matter.

The issue of changing the flag was last brought before the state’s voters 14 years ago, when Mississippians chose, by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1, to leave it as is.

CNN’s Nick Valencia and Devon M. Sayers contributed to this report.