White cop who body-slammed black girl faces no charges
A white US police officer, whose outrageous actions against a 16-year-old African-American girl captured on cameras last year, will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor says.
South Carolina prosecutor Solicitor Dan Johnson decided on Friday not to criminally charge officer Ben Fields, who was seen on videos violently handcuffing the girl at Spring Valley High School in Columbia last October.
Fields, the school resource officer was seen slamming the girl and wrapping his forearm around her neck before dragging her from behind her desk and throwing her across the classroom to handcuff her. He called on the girl to surrender her mobile phone but she refused.
The incident made headlines and caused outrage across the nation last year.
In a 12-page court report, the prosecutor, however, said he found no probable cause to charge Fields. Johnson only expressed concerns over the “manner” in which Fields handled the situation.
The report includes statements from some witnesses, who claimed the incident looked worse in the video than it really was. Another witness was quoted in the report as saying that the officer did not intentionally throw the girl across the room, but lost his grip in trying to remove her from the desk after she refused to leave.
Fields also claimed that the desk flipped over only because the student had locked her leg inside it. He also claimed that she punched him in the chest.
Both the African-American student and Niya Kenny, who captured the video, have faced "disturbing schools" charges for nearly a year. Johnson said they would also be dropped.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against South Carolina over the criminalization of normal adolescent misbehavior. It argued that state's "disturbing schools" and "disorderly conduct" charges are unconstitutionally vague.
Kenny and several other students have also joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs.
According to a survey release by The GenForward in August, two-thirds of young African-Americans in the US said that they or someone they know has experienced police violence or harassment.
Another report by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project, US police killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African-Americans.
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