Video Shows Officer Flipping Student in South Carolina, Prompting Inquiry

The authorities in South Carolina are investigating an encounter captured on two videos that went viral Monday afternoon that show a white school police officer in a Columbia classroom grabbing an African-American student by the neck, flipping her backward as she sat at her desk, then dragging and throwing her across the floor.

The videos, apparently shot by students in the classroom, were picked up by national news outlets and had ricocheted across social media platforms by Monday evening, sparking a new round of angry and anguished debate over how police officers treat African-Americans.
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The Richland County sheriff, Leon Lott, told a South Carolina television station that the officer, a deputy with the sheriff’s department, had been responding to a disruptive student who was refusing to leave class at Spring Valley High School, a campus of about 2,000 students that is about 52 percent black and 30 percent white. Officials did not release the name of either the student or the deputy. But students identified the officer as Ben Fields, who is listed on the school district’s website as one of the two officers assigned to the high school. His biography on the website said he also coaches the school football team’s defensive line and is the team’s strength and conditioning coach.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/us/officers-classroom-fight-with-student-is-caught-on-video.html?_r=1