SC sheriff ‘wanted to throw up’ over Spring Valley video of his officer

The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department will investigate an incident between a school resource officer and a female student at Spring Valley High School that was caught on video Monday and posted online.

“The Columbia FBI Field Office, the Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina have opened a civil rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest of a student at Spring Valley High School,” a Department of Justice spokesperson wrote in an email.

“The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence in order to determine whether a federal law was violated. As this is an ongoing investigation, per Department of Justice policy we are unable to comment further at this time.”

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott asked Dave Thomas, special agent in charge for the FBI for South Carolina, and William Nettles, the U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, with the Justice Department, to investigate.

“I hope the community will remain calm so that we can conduct a thorough and thoughtful investigation,” Nettles told The State newspaper Tuesday. “At the conclusion of that investigation, we’ll be happy to discuss our findings with the community.”

The video has gone viral. It shows Senior Deputy Ben Fields approach the female student seated in a desk. The resource officer proceeds to place his left hand on the female student’s left arm, before putting his right arm around her neck.

Fields then flips the desk over, with the student still seated, before spinning it around and forcibly removing the student and trying to restrain her on the floor at the front of the classroom.

Fields is white; the student is African-American.

That teen and another female student were arrested for disturbing the peace, sheriff’s department spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said Sunday morning.

Lott said Fields is on unpaid leave.

Richland 2 superientendent Debbie Hamm called the video “outrageous” and “heinous” during a Tuesday afternoon news conference. Richland 2 board chairman James Manning said the district does not want Fields to serve again in any Richland 2 school. They would not discuss details of the incident.

Sheriff Leon Lott said he “wanted to throw up” when he saw the video of his officer. “But I have to look at the total picture. ... But, yes, I’m human. I’m a parent.

He said his internal investigation will determine, likely within 24 hours, whether the officer followed procedure and whether he should continue working as a deputy.

The investigation being done by the FBI and the Justice Department is a criminal one, Lott said. His is procedural.

He has 87 school resource officers, which is the largest number in the state, he said. And there have been SROs, as they’re called, since he was first elected sheriff 19 years ago.

That predates the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, which many see as the moment when SROs became almost mandatory in schools nationwide, especially high schools.

Some point to an earlier kickoff for an SRO presence: The early 1990s push for zero-tolerance in the classroom and on the street.

Drugs, the fear of gangs and, since Columbine, the fear of an angry teen with a gun has helped get school resource officers caught up in discipline as much as criminal behavior, youth advocates say.

The fear of doing nothing, if something blows up later, is tremendous. The public expects action.

Because of that, officers’ hands are often tied by laws and policies that force them to act, said International Association of Chiefs of Police President Richard Beary during a public forum in January for the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Lott said the charge of “disturbing schools,” for example, can be, and is, widely applied, sometimes when students should stay in school and not handled criminally. That’s why there are alternative schools, he said.

Hamm said school and district leaders typically separate discipline issues from criminal issues when it comes to response protocol.

“We do have separate protocols for disciplinary incidents and criminal behavior. School resource officers are typically involved in the latter,” Hamm said. “Something did not go right in this classroom.”

_________

“I have some concerns,” Lott said. And “that’s something the school district is going to have to think about.”

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Asked if he thought race played a role in Fields’ actions, Lott said, “I would hope that race played no part in this. I wouldn’t care if she’s purple. ... I’m looking at the deputy’s actions.”

Spring Valley’s second school resources officer, who is black, came into the classroom at the end of the incident, Lott said, and helped handcuff the student and walk her to the office.

Lott said three students shot video. Each shows the incident a little differently, he said. The one that appeared on social media last shows the student hitting the officer with her fists right before the desk is tipped over.

“She bears some responsibility in this,” Lott said of the student when asked about her role. “She disrupted class. But we’re not looking at what she did ... and we want students held accountable – not crucified.”

The citizens videos are something that “helps us tremendously,” he said. But a video “is a snapshot, not a total picture.”

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund on Tuesday called the video “shocking.”

There have been racial tensions between black parents and the school district’s administration, with black parents most often citing concerns about the discipline of black students.

The Black Parents Association formed a year ago and now has more than 5,000 members. It was active in last year’s elections, which saw a black majority elected to the seven-member Richland 2 board for the first time.

The area’s demographics have changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Richland 2 has evolved from a predominantly white suburban district to a district that is now majority-minority.

Board member Calvin “Chip” Jackson said before last year’s elections that Richland 2 also is less affluent than in the past, which has also required the addition of new initiatives to address children in poverty, particularly those who move in and out of the district.

Richland 2’s student population is 59 percent black and 26 percent white, according to the district’s most recent numbers. The district is the Columbia area’s largest, with more than 27,000 students.

S.C. Sen. and former Spring Valley student Joel Lourie, D-Richland, released a statement by email, expressing sympathy for the student and her family.

“I have watched with horror the disturbing video from Spring Valley High School today,” Lourie said Monday night. “As the father of two children, including a daughter, my thoughts and prayers are with the young lady, her family and the entire Richland 2 community who are all severely hurting right now. I cannot imagine what could have led to such a violent response from the law enforcement officer. I am confident that both the school district and the sheriff’s department will do a quick but thorough investigation to bring us all the facts and take the appropriate action necessary.”

Fields has been with the sheriff’s department since 2004, the department said. He joined the school resource officer program in 2008, and in 2014 he received the Richland School District 2 Culture of Excellence Award. Fields serves as a school resource officer with the Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary School as well as Spring Valley.

Fields is a son of Wayne Fields, the president and CEO of Columbia’s Oliver Gospel Mission, Lott said. Oliver Gospel is an organization that has served some of Columbia’s homeless population for more than 100 years.

Online civil rights group ColorOfChange.org has launched a petition calling for Fields to be fired and prosecuted, and for charges to be dropped against the students arrested. The petition has already received thousands of signatures.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, South Carolina’s rate of student “referrals to law enforcement” was not above the national state-by-state average. The state’s rate is 5 per 1,000, compared to about 6 per 1,000 nationally.

But the state’s numbers did show a pattern of disproportionate referrals of black students. Black students represented almost 36 percent of the state’s public school student body, but they were 50 percent of all students referred to law enforcement. Spring Valley High School reported no arrests or referrals that year. Schools are currently sending in data to the federal education department for an update not likely to be released until next year.

This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 8:39 AM with the headline "SC sheriff ‘wanted to throw up’ over Spring Valley video of his officer."