UPDATE 12:15 p.m.:
Deputy Ben Fields has officially been fired following the release of footage showing him body-slamming a teen girl in a Spring Valley High School classroom. "His actions were probably something that if he would have done it over again, he would have done it differently," Sheriff Leon Lott said during a press conference. An investigation is ongoing.
See original story below.
Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields, the hulking resource officer captured on camera violently manhandling a teen student in a Spring Valley High School classroom, will now be relieved of duty. Local authorities are expected to announce Fields' firing during a press conference on Wednesday, according to NBC News. Sheriff Leon Lott is also expected to provide details regarding plans for an internal investigation centered on Monday’s incident, another in an overwhelmingly long list of examples of disturbing police brutality all across the country.
Though details surrounding the video were scarce upon its initial release, the student who filmed some of the viral footage eventually spoke to reporters regarding the unlikely chain of events that bafflingly resulted in Fields unsettling act of brutality. "I've never seen anything so nasty looking, so sick to the point that you know, other students are turning away, don't know what to do, and are just scared for their lives," one student told WLTX 19. "That's supposed to be somebody that's going to protect us. Not somebody that we need to be scared of, or afraid." The victim had reportedly used her phone during class "for a quick second" before Fields was called into the classroom, at which point the incident quickly escalated.
Fields apparently had a history of similarly violent encounters, including a 2005 incident involving 36-year-old Army veteran Carlos Martin. "I recognized him on the spot," Martin told the New York Daily News after seeing the Spring Valley attack on YouTube. "I remember how big he was." Martin and his then-wife filed suit against Fields for civil rights violations stemming from the bizarre arrest, which reportedly began with an unrelated noise complaint and included predictably awful statements from Fields including "Get her black ass!" and "I'm glad Johnnie Cochran is dead."
