Spring Valley High School officer suspended after violent classroom arrest

Richland County Sheriff's Office is in the spotlight again, after suspending an officer for a violent arrest at a local high school.

This one is pretty interesting to see it develop. As soon as the video surfaced, the deputy was suspended. This is the same department that has recently made the news for having a deputy driving on a suspended license, another making a very public and bad arrest, etc.

The student in question wouldn't put her phone down in class. The teacher called the officer, who came to the classroom. The girl then proceeded to "keep it real" with the officer until he tried to physically stand her up. At that point she tried to strike him, and he flipped her desk over. For me there's a lot of angles to this. The teacher doesn't appear to have made much effort to deal with it. And calling the school resource officer to arrest somebody for texting? Come on, why is that policy?

The deputy is in an unenviable position. He's supposed to take her in to custody and she hasn't suddenly become cooperative, which would allow him to walk away from it all. Passively resisting him while folded up in in a chair and desk. Not to excuse the dragging her across the room, but that's not a piece of cake to get somebody out of those chairs gracefully.

Finally, when this story first surfaced there was video shot from a more lateral angle. That video showed the girl striking and trying to strike the deputy when he tried to pull her up. Now there's a second video that doesn't show the girl trying to strike the deputy, but shows him flipping her and her desk over rather more clearly. Curious to me that MSM has switched videos. Can't imagine why they would do that.

And now we learn that Jesse Jackson has already weighed in on things, calling for termination and charged. The sheriff has invited the FBI to conduct an investigation into the incident.

Anyway, hadn't seen this on here. I don't envy the deputy. That's a ridiculous policy to call for arrest because of texting. I think the deputy lost his cool after getting some attitude and a hand or two thrown his way, but at the same time it's not easy to forcibly remove somebody from one of those desks.

www.cnn.com...#

a reply to: Shamrock6

The issues here are many fold.

First of all, he is a reasoning, functioning being, and an officer of the law. There is no law which states that one may not text while in class, and there is no law which says a student must obey school policy, or the instructions of teachers and staff at a school. Only breakage of an actual LAW can be grounds for involving the police, and there was none as far as the data we currently have, suggests.

Therefore, he should have refused to act until a law was violated, which for all intents and purposes, had not yet occurred.

Instead, he allowed himself to be drawn into a matte which was not his to deal with, and his actions afterward are his responsibility, and his liability legally. His actions were not undertaken in protection of the law, or the public, and so he has no defence for what amounts to a criminal assault.

Of course the cop overreacted and went too far, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the teenager.
She should be arrested for assautilng the cop and then expelled from school.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Interesting thought. If he manhandles her whilst enforcing school policy, which has no force of law, has he committed assault on a minor in a way that his qualified immunity can't cover? I mean, "school policy" could call for beheading for texting, it doesn't mean that it has any legal standing whatever. If the deputy is enforcing policy, and not law, is it legit?

a reply to: TrueBrit

That's where I come down in it. A school policy violation is, as far as I'm aware, not an arrestable offense. It's a trip to the principal's office. This story turns ridiculous from the beginning with the call to an SRO to arrest somebody for texting. It only gets more bizarre from there, and ends with the media switching up the videos they're using for the incident.

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