VIDEO: SC School Cop Violently Assaults Student in Class

By Tom Cleary, Heavy

27 October 15

 

South Carolina sheriff’s deputy is under investigation after videos were posted online Monday showing him violently throwing a high school student from her desk in a classroom.

The videos of the incident involving Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields surfaced just hours after it happened at Spring Valley High School. The Richland County School District 2 and sheriff’s office say they are investigating.

A witness who posted a video of the incident on Youtube said the girl was asked by the teacher to get off her cell phone, but refused, and then would not leave the class room when asked by an administrator, so police were called. She allegedly refused the deputy’s requests to get up from her desk, and that is when the videos begin.

Fields, the 34-year-old senior school resource officer at the high school, has been placed on administrative duty while the sheriff’s office investigates. The school district said it has asked Fields to not return to any school in the district pending the outcome of the investigation.

The girl in the video was arrested, according to the sheriff’s office. Another student was also arrested in connection with the incident, according to WLTX.. The female student was released to her parents, while the male remains in custody. Both were either seniors or juniors, the sheriff’s office said.

Here’s what you need to know:

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1. Fields Told the Student ‘Are You Coming With Me or am I Going to Make You?’

The 15-second video was posted on social media just hours after the incident happened on Monday. It shows a white officer grabbing the black student by the arm as she sits in her desk.

Deputy Ben Fields, at one point during the incident, says to the girl, “Are you going to come with me or am I going to make you? Come on. I’m going to get you up.”

In the video, Fields pulls on her arm, moving the desk and the girl and then grabs hold of her shoulder and neck area. He turns over the desk, throwing it and the unnamed student to the ground. He then drags her toward the door, pulling the desk along with her and then throws her out of it before jumping on top of her to handcuff her as the video ends.

Students in the classroom sit silently, as a teacher also watches. In a second angle of the video, Fields can be heard telling another student, “I’ll put you in jail next.” Watch that angle below:

A third video, from yet another angle, was posted online by Reginald Seabrooks:

Seabrooks wrote in the video description on Youtube, “The officer in this is a cool dude,he is not Racist!!!. Girl was asked her to put the phone away,but told teacher no and Administrator was called and asked her to come to his office. She told him no,he then called the resource officer. When he got there he asked her nicely to get up.Over and over he did nothing wrong. They asked her to get up but she wanted to show off. To some it looks bad but she wanted to prove that she was bad.”

A student in the classroom tweeted his eyewitness account of the video, saying “to be clear,” the girl was “sitting quietly at her desk,” and did not provoke the deputy before the video started. Aaron Johnson said “nobody even knew what she did,” and why he grabbed her.

The girl in the video was new to our class, and she was quiet like she never talked to anyone

— Aaron Johnson (@Aaron___J) October 26, 2015

Johnson said, “When I asked (their teacher) Mr. Long if he felt bad for what happened to her … his reply was ‘she should have cooperated.'”

He added, “I think we were all in shock and afraid they would say something to us, he put another girl in handcuffs for standing up, like standing up for the girl.”

The video quickly went viral, with #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh trending worldwide on Twitter and Facebook.

The district told WLTX-TV in a statement, “We are aware of an incident that occurred today at Spring Valley High School. Video of it has been posted on social media. The incident is under investigation. We are working closely with the sheriff’s department.”

Sheriff Leon Lott told WIS-TV the officer was called because the student refused to leave class.

“The student was told she was under arrest for disturbing school and given instructions which she again refused,” Lott told the news station. “The video then shows the student resisting and being arrested by the SRO.”

Lott is out of town at a police conference. The sheriff office’s spokesman, Lieutenant Curtis Wilson, told reporters, the sheriff, “did see the video, and was very disturbed by what he saw. As a matter of fact, he has questions just like everybody else does. He wants answers to those questions. Once he has those, he will address those.”

The high school has about 2,000 students, according to the district’s website. Of those students, 52 percent are black and 30 percent are white.

The video has raised comparisons to an incident in McKinney, Texas, in June, when a police officer there violently arrested an unarmed black teen at a pool party. Eric Casebolt later resigned from the department. He is still facing an investigation.

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2. He Is Accused of ‘Recklessly’ Targeting ‘African-American Students With Allegations of Gang Membership’

Deputy Ben Fields is facing a lawsuit in federal court accusing him of violating the civil rights of a student at Spring Valley High School. The student, Ashton James Reese, was expelled from the high school for “unlawful assembly of gang activity and assault and battery,” in 2013. He was accused of participating in a “gang related” fight in a Walmart parking lot near the school.

You can read the complaint above.

Fields, who did not respond to the fight, led the investigation, and described it as a “huge gang fight,” that was an attempt to unite three gangs at the school. He said Reese was identified as being in the video and being part of a gang. But Reese denies he is a gang member, according to the lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, Reese’s attorneys claim Fields, “recklessly targets African-American students with allegations of gang membership and criminal gang activity.”

A jury trial is scheduled to begin on January 27, 2016.

Fields was also sued in federal court in 2007 from his time as a patrol deputy. A jury eventually ruled in Fields’ favor. Read that complaint below:

In that lawsuit, Fields was accused of violating the civil rights of a man and woman at an apartment complex in Columbia. The plaintiff, Carlos Martin, says was driving his car near his home and saw a police officer driving his cruiser in the parking lot. He said he nodded to the officer “as a friendly gesture and greeting.”

Martin said shortly after he parked his car and was walking to his apartment. He says he then heard the officer, later identified as Fields, running toward him calling, “Hey you.” Fields asked for Martin’s license and registration and asked if he was the cause of excessive noise that a resident had complained about. Martin told Fields he wasn’t the source and had just got home from work.

“Deputy Fields became agitated when Plaintiff Carlos Martin, with absolutely no disrespect, addressed Deputy Fields using the colloquial term ‘dude,'” the lawsuit states. “Despite (Martin’s) attempts to assure the Deputy that he intended no disrespect, Deputy Fields nevertheless became increasingly angry. Deputy Fields’ unprovoked anger escalated to the point that he grabbed (Martin), slammed him to the ground, cuffed him, began kicking him, and chemically maced him until his clothing was drenched and the contents of the can of mace was depleted.”

According to the lawsuit, Fields later seized a cell phone from Martin’s wife, Tashiana Anita Martin, who recorded the incident on video and never returned to her. He also arrested her. The charges against both were later dropped when the prosecution failed to show up for court.

Fields, in his reply to the lawsuit, said Martin was playing excessively loud music from his vehicle, and he was going to cite him for that before Martin become boisterous and used profanity toward Fields. He said Martin pulled away when he tried to handcuff him, and then started kicking him, so he used force to arrest him.

Also, according to the lawsuit, Fields “made ridiculing and suggestive comments that he was going to take Plaintiff Tashiana Anita Martin to a Motel 6.” He denied that claim.

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3. Students Say They Saw Fields ‘Slam’ Students, Including a Pregnant Girl, for Years

Fields is the senior Richland County deputy sheriff assigned to Spring Valley High School as a school resource officer, according to the sheriff office’s website.

He supervises one other deputy at the school.

Former and current students flocked to Twitter to lodge their complaints about Fields.

Parents in a group called the Richland 2 Black Parents Association told WIS-TV the video is “egregious and “unacceptable,” adding in a statement, “Parents are heartbroken as this is just another example of the intolerance that continues to be of issue in Richland School District Two particularly with families and children of color. As we have stated in the past, we stand ready to work in collaboration to address these horrible acts of violence and inequities among our children.”

The district said it is “deeply concerned” about the incident. “Student safety is and always will be the district’s top priority,” the school district’s statement said. “The district will not tolerate any actions that jeopardize the safety of our students.”

Columbia Mayor Steven Benjamin said in a statement, “Though this incident involved a Richland County Sheriff’s Deputy and not an officer with the Columbia Police Department, we cannot and will not accept this kind of behavior from any law enforcement officer and I firmly believe we need an independent investigation to get to the bottom of this incident and see that justice is done.”

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4. Fields, Also a Football Coach & Power Lifter, Became a Cop 11 Years Ago After Junior College

According to his now-deleted Twitter account, Fields is also the defensive line and strength coach for the Spring Valley High School football team.

Fields became a coach in 2012, working with the defensive line, and added the strength coaching responsibilities a season later, the team’s website says.

Videos posted on YouTube show Fields weightlifting:

Fields said in during his deposition for a federal lawsuit filed against him that he is a competitive power lifter, saying it is a “sport,” where you “try to lift as much as you can at one time.”

In his deposition, Fields says he does not take steroids, but has not been tested for steroids in the past. He said he has taken supplements, including Creatin, to help build muscles.

Students said on Twitter they were afraid of Fields because of his stature:

Over a dozen students told me that Officer Ben Fields is built like a bodybuilder. Said they were all scared to death of him.

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 26, 2015

Fields grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and graduated from a private Christian high school there in 2000. He then graduated with an associate’s degree from a junior college in Kansas and moved to Columbia, South Carolina, because his parents had relocated there, he says in the lawsuit deposition.

His father, Wayne Fields, is the president and CEO of the Oliver Gospel Mission in Columbia, where Ben Fields worked for one year before becoming a police officer.

He said he was encouraged to become a police officer by a deputy sheriff who taught at Midlands Tech, where Fields took three criminal justice classes.

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5. He Received the ‘Culture of Excellence’ Award Earlier Last Year for Being a ‘Role Model’

Deputy Ben Fields was honored with the Richland School District Two Culture of Excellence Award in November 2014, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s write-up about him winning the award says Fields has worked with the department since 2004 and became a school resource officer in 2008. He is also assigned to Lonnie B. Nelson Elementary School.

Fields, the sheriff says, “has proven to be an exceptional role model to the students he serves and protects.”