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When I first saw the video of Ben Fields hooking an arm around a black girl’s neck, flipping her over in her seat, dragging and throwing her across the room and then handcuffing her, never once did I wonder what she might have done to deserve it.
Fields, until recently, was a resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. This week, the entire country saw video of him manhandling a 16-year-old student at Spring Valley High in the most forceful way possible. Critics have characterized his actions as “assault,” and the footage has led the FBI and Department of Justice to launch an investigation. Fields, who was also a sheriff’s deputy in Richland County, South Carolina, was fired Wednesday after a 48-hour investigation into his conduct.
As 2015 draws to a close, no one should need an explanation of why it’s horrifying to see a white police officer treat an unarmed black teen this way. It’s especially upsetting to see this happen in a school — the place we’re always telling teens to stay in; the place where they’re supposed to be able to get an education that will help them advance in life. Of course, for far too many students — particularly students of color — school is just a place to get railroaded into the criminal justice system. Yet as the video of Fields has spread this week, some black men seem strangely determined to figure out what this teenager did to provoke such treatment, even though no one is in a better position than black men themselves to understand how sometimes police brutality simply happens because an officer decided to be brutal.
