Last October, a video of School Resource Officer (SRO) Ben Fields ripping a young African-American student from her desk and slamming her to the ground went viral, fueling another round of intense outrage at excessive use of force by government agents against African-American civilians. In South Carolina, where the incident took place, there wereprotests and counter-protests. Most major media outletscovered the affair, showing the video from multiple anglesand debating whether to blame the student or the cop. Within a few days, Fields had been fired.
The man who fired him was Sherriff Leon Lott of Richland County. I met with Lott a few weeks ago in South Carolina to discuss the role of SROs and the problematic mission creep that has resulted in the widespread criminalization of children—especially those children already marginalized by race, disability, class, and other factors that help keep the "school-to-prison pipeline" running.
Lott told me that he had no choice but to fire Fields, and I was pleased to hear it. An officer who would do that to a student not only has no place in school, but has no place in law enforcement. But beyond holding Fields responsible, I asked him how we can avoid the next incident, rather than only reacting to the last one. The Spring Valley news cycle has long since faded, and I was hoping to find evidence of structural change.
[For more of this story, written by David M. Perry, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...l-to-prison-pipeline]
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