Videos of Deputy Dragging Student Play to Contentious Issue
By RICHARD FAUSSET, RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and ALAN BLINDER
OCT. 27, 2015
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Viral videos of a white sheriff’s deputy upending and dragging an uncooperative black girl in a high school classroom have played into a contentious national issue with particular resonance here — the intersection of race and school discipline and whether black students are disproportionately punished.
The incident follows a set of national studies showing that black students were far more likely than whites to be disciplined in public schools, even for comparable offenses.
The issue was receiving intense scrutiny here long before the videos released Monday.
Last year, the racial divide in the Richland School District Two, which encompasses parts of this city and its suburbs, led to the formation of the Black Parents Association, a role in a divisive campaign between rival slates for the district’s board of education. Complaints of excessive — and racially disparate — disciplinary action had been a major concern for the district for years, leading the district to form a task force last year to examine conduct policies and penalties.
A collection of videos that have led to nationwide protests, federal investigations and changes in policy and attitudes on race.
The videos, which quickly went viral, showed a sheriff’s deputy assigned as a school safety officer to Spring Valley High School, addressing a 16-year-old girl who had refused to stand and leave her math class, after her teacher reportedly caught her using her phone. The deputy, Ben Fields, tipped her chair and desk over backward, lifting her out of her seat and slamming her to the floor, and then dragged her to the front of the classroom, where he cuffed her hands behind her back.
His action drew quick condemnation from many quarters. Sheriff Leon Lott of Richland County placed the deputy on leave and asked federal authorities to investigate. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with the F.B.I. and the United States attorney for South Carolina, said they would look into the incident. Hillary Rodham Clinton tweeted, “The #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh is unacceptable.” James Manning, the chairman of the district’s board of trustees, said, “The amount of force used on a female student by a male officer appears to me to be excessive and unnecessary.”
In Richland Two, where 59 percent of students are black, 77 percent of those suspended at least once in 2011-12 were black, according to figures compiled by the Justice Department, though comparison of the offenses involved was not readily available. And South Carolina, including Richland, relies much more on suspension than the nation as a whole; 24 percent of public school students in the state were suspended at least once that year, compared with 13 percent nationwide.
The Richland Two Black Parents Association has criticized the district for disciplinary policies that it calls arbitrary, and that some members believe disproportionately affect African-American students, said Stephen Mr. Gilchrist, one of the founding members. He said the group was formed in early 2014 to increase African-American representation among the school district’s leadership, and address cultural tensions in a racially mixed district.
The district’s population is 46 percent black and 44 percent white, and before the elections in November 2014, whites held a 4-3 majority on the school board.
As the Black Parents group became more visible last year, and its members promoted African-American candidates for school board, a rival group emerged, called the Bi-Partisan Committee, Its seven principal members were white, and it sponsored a slate of three whites and one black candidate for the board.
John Hudgens, a former superintendent of the district who retired in 1994, was a leader of the Bi-Partisan Committee and said Tuesday that one of the group’s chief concerns was that the black group was trying to force the district to hire on the basis of race rather than talent. He and George Shissias, who was involved with the Bi-Partisan Committee, said the black parents group had explicitly called for the removal of white administrators — a claim Mr. Gilchrist denies.
The Bi-Partisan Committee sent a flyer that, Mr. Shissias said, criticized the black parents group for overemphasizing race. Among other things, the flyer noted a black board member’s censure for reportedly threatening a grandson’s coach.
The Black Parents group responded on its website, saying that the other group’s tactics were reminiscent of the White Citizens Councils that resisted desegregation in the 1960s. “This is about wanting to keep an apartheid system in place for Richland Two,” the website said.
Of the four contested at-large seats, three were won by the Bi-Partisan Committee’s favored candidates, including their black candidate. The school board now has four black and three white members.
Last August, the district’s task force on student misconduct recommended the adoption of policies specifying “a consistent set of consequences for infractions at each level,” and using “a system to empower students to take ownership and responsibility for their choices.”
Such a system, the task force said, would “give them a voice while at the same time protecting the instructional environment.”
The number of students suspended actually understates the use of suspensions, because many students are suspended more than once in the course of a year. The district suspended about 5,800 of its 26,000 students in 2011-12, but there were over 10,000 suspensions. Last year, that figure was down to 8,800 suspensions.
“We are trending in the right direction,” Roosevelt Garrick Jr., the district’s chief administrative officer, told the school board in August. At the time, Mr. Garrick said officials were still evaluating whether Richland 2’s disciplinary record was similar to those of similarly sized districts.
In 2011-12, when Spring Valley High School had an enrollment of nearly 2,100 students, administrators issued 661 suspensions, nearly one for every three students. Although black people made up 54 percent of the student body at Spring Valley, they received more than 70 percent of the suspensions.
At Spring Valley, reactions to the videos varied, as did views of Deputy Fields, who is also the defensive line coach and strength coach for the school’s football team.
Some students were shocked by what they had seen in the videos, but others said they were not surprised in the least.
Some praised Deputy Fields as fair and friendly, a professional, authoritative, everyday presence in the halls of the vast tan complex set near a few big-box stores in a sprawling maze of suburban-style housing.
“It was crazy — Deputy Fields was always nice to everyone,” said Quentin Jones, 15, a sophomore.
But another student, Michael Workman, 16, a junior who is white, said that Deputy Fields arrested him on suspicion of stealing a phone during his freshman year (Mr. Workman said that he did not steal the phone and that he was not convicted of a crime). He said that after he was handcuffed, Deputy Fields lifted him by the handcuffs for a few seconds.
“I had bruises on my wrists and I wasn’t even handcuffed for that long,” Mr. Workman said.
Mr. Jones’s friends, Xavier Glover, 15, and Jaiden Garner, who are cornerbacks on the school football team, knew Deputy Fields better than most, and they said that like many coaches, he would get loud and boisterous if he thought it would improve a student’s performance in the weight room or on the field.
“If you’re not low enough on your squats, he’s going to be in your face,” Mr. Garner said. But the young men, both of whom are African-American, felt that Deputy Fields always had the students’ best interest at heart. “He yells a lot,” Mr. Glover said, “But it’s for the best of us.
Mr. Jones, listening to his friends, felt the need to interject. “No matter how cool he is, there’s no reason for him to do that to a lady,” he said. “Because he’s a grown, strong man.”
Nygel King, 16, another sophomore, said that Deputy Fields “acted like a typical cop” in the hallways — “But never in a bad way,” he said.
The video, he said, stunned him. “For one, she wasn’t resisting at all,” he said. “And two, I’ve never seen him be super-aggressive with another student.”
Charles Scarborough, a sophomore, saw the confrontation in the classroom. He said he was sitting quietly in his Algebra I class working on some math problems.
He said that the young woman, a sophomore, was on her phone, and that the teacher asked her to put her phone away, getting “close to her face.”
When an administrator and Deputy Fields were brought in, students in the class “barely knew what was going on,” he said. The administrator and the deputy each asked her to leave multiple times and requested that she cooperate.
The young woman insisted that she did not do anything wrong and refused to leave. She remained quietly in her desk as they continued to ask her to leave. Then Deputy Fields grabbed the girl, flipped her desk and dragged her across the floor. Mr. Scarborough saw the deputy put his knee on her as he tried to arrest her.
Students in the classroom stood up, confused about what was happening. Mr. Scarborough said that he and his friends were trying to defend the young woman, but the deputy told them to “sit down or you all will be next.”
The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.
“I was crying, like literally screaming, crying like a baby,” Ms. Kenny, 18, told WLTX. “I couldn’t believe that was happening. I’d never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl.”
As she protested, she said, “He said since you’ve got so much to say, you’re coming, too.”
Students in the class were unsettled after the arrest, and many felt the situation could have been handled in a better way.
“I feel like it shouldn’t be done like that,” Mr. Scarborough said. “Even if she was causing a problem, it could be handled differently. That’s a grown man handling a girl — that’s someone’s daughter, that’s someone’s kid, that’s someone’s sister.”
Several students said that the young woman was quiet and generally not a troublemaker — another reason the confrontation surprised them.
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#uncooperativeblackstudentsmatter