Video shows school officer tossing student in classroom

As he continues to try to restrain her, she is thrown several feet across the classroom as the officer tells her repeatedly to put her hands behind her back.

“I have never seen anything so nasty-looking, so sick, to the point where other students are turning away, you know, don’t know what to do”, student Tony Robinson Jr.

The officer then tips the attached chair and desk backward until she slams to the floor.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, whose office supplies the resource officers at the school, told WLTX an administrator had been called after the student did not obey the teacher’s request to leave. The student was reportedly told she was under arrest but she continued to refuse to follow the officer’s orders. The incident is witnessed by a classroom full of students who stare silently. The student in the video along with another female student were charged with disturbing the school.

“Parents are heartbroken as this is justanotherexample of the intolerancethatcontinues to be of issue in RichlandSchoolDistrict Two particularlywithfamilies and children of color”, read a statement by the Richland Two BlackParentsAssociation.

School officials and the Richland County Police Department are now investigating the confrontation.

The video, of which there are at least two versions showing the same chain of events, was apparently filmed by students.

The video shows Mr Fields asking a girl to rise from a classroom desk.

Fields was assigned as one of the school’s resource officers, while the circumstances leading up to the incident are not clear.

The State newspaper in Columbia reported that the pupil and a male student were detained for breaching the peace. I want answers too, and we’re going to get them very quickly. “Not somebody that we need to be scare off, or afraid”.

“You don’t know me?”

The district has a legacy of expelling and suspending large numbers of African-American students, he said. Superintendent Dr. Debbie Hamm released a statement this afternoon, reading in part, “Student safety is and always will be the district’s top priority”.

The officer, identified as Richland County Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Fields, can be heard on cell phone video telling the girl to get up from her desk.