South Carolina officer fired after tussle with student

By Kelly Cohen, Kelly Cohen

Published December 20, 2015

A South Carolina police officer who violently removed a black, female student from her desk has been fired.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said Wednesday that Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields, who was serving as a resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, did not follow proper procedures and training when called to deal with a female student in a classroom, and has thus been "terminated."

Videos filmed Monday went viral, showing Fields, who is white, flipping a black female high school student out of her desk and dragging her across the classroom. Fields was called in to remove the student from the classroom, who had already been asked to leave by a teacher and an administrator to leave for being disruptive.

Calls for Fields to be fired piled up after the videos went viral, so the police agency's training unit took a look at the videos and determined Fields did not follow proper training and procedure.