Daily Kos' Scopes "Officer Slam's" Assault On S.C. High School Student

There Are No Innocent Black People

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The Truth about the Spring Valley "Officer Slam" Assault on a Teen Girl

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As is often the case and we last saw when teenager Dejarria Becton was assaulted by Corporal Casebolt in McKinney Texas pundits have already done plenty of pundifying about how the black teenager who was slammed to the floor for the "crime" of not leaving the classroom when asked brought it all on herself by her failure to comply. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has said as much.

“She was very disruptive, she was very disrespectful, and she started this whole incident with her actions,” Lott said during a press conference. “She refused to leave the class as directed by the teacher, she refused to follow his instructions, he called for assistance from the school administrator, the school administrator got there — he was African American — and he attempted to get her to leave the class also, she refused his instructions and was disrespectful to him.”

Not many news agencies have reported, or even wondered why she was asked to leave in the first place.  As it turns out she had momentarily looked at her phone during class, and apologized for it at the time.  Nor have they wondered why the phone issue, which she had already put away, escalated to an administrator and then the now fired school resource officer who had a reputation around the campus as "Officer Slam" for his tendency to throw students to the ground, assaulted her in the first place. They say she was "disruptive and disrespectful" but witnesses state that she was arguing that she'd done nothing wrong, which actually she hadn't. Before Slamster even approached the student he had another student move his desk and clear a path, then removed the Chromebook that was on her desk - so he planned from the moment he entered the room to assault her regardless of anything she did or didn't do.

And also it's not true, despite the claims of CNN's leading cop-apologist Harry Houck that this WWE move was "just fine" because she wasn't injured. She was injured.

State Rep. Todd Rutherford (D-Columbia) told WLTX-TV the 16-year-old girl suffered arm, neck and back injuries when Fields grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground after the teen refused to hand over her cell phone to a teacher.

“He weighs about 300 pounds,” Rutherford said. “She is a student who is 16 years old, who now has a cast on her arm, a band aid on her neck, and neck and back problems. There’s something wrong here.”

Rutherford told the New York Daily News that the teen recently lost her mother and is living in a foster home. The teen’s foster mother said the girl was “devastated and emotionally traumatized by all that has happened to her,” according to the Daily News.

The fact is that what this officer did was extremely dangerous, the girl could have very easily hit her head on the floor, cracked her skull, broke her neck or suffered a concussion as a result of this Officer's actions.  She could have died.

And for those who say that the problem is improper parenting, the young girl in question happens to be an orphan in foster care.

Over the flip I have video of an interview with one of the videographers in the classroom, a fellow student who was also arrested for daring to say out loud that what was happening was wrong.

First from Chris Hayes who interviewed Niya Kenny who was one of the people who shot the video and was also arrested, sorry for the quality of the video I haven't found a better copy yet.

Hayes: What happened in that classroom before the video starts?

Kenny: Well, she was asked to leave the classroom. She refused to leave the classroom, and our teacher then called an administrator in the class, and she still refused to leave then Deputy Ben Fields was called in.

Hayes: Was her infraction that, I had seen reports, that she was looking at her phone? Is that what attracted the attention of the teacher, initially?

Kenny: Yes, sir.

Hayes: So she was looking at her phone, she wasn't like standing up and yelling for example?

Kenny: Not at all, she's a quiet girl. She doesn't do anything to anyone in the class, it was really because she wouldn't give up her phone.

Hayes: The teacher tries to get her out of the class because she won't turn over her phone to the administrator or leave.

Technically that's not exactly what she says, she says the teacher demanded the phone not the administrator.  She wouldn't turn it over, so the administer is called who asked her to leave, she still said "No", so Deputy Fields is called.

It's after this that things get interesting.

Hayes: Is this something that you've seen before that the school resource officer is called into a situation like this?

Kenny: Never have I ever seen anything like this.

Hayes: Were you and other students surprised that it seemed to escalate to that point?

Kenny: Maybe the other kids were because they were younger and they haven't been at Spring Valley that long, I've heard about him so I wasn't really surprised, because I've heard so much about him.   So I - before he came to class I was actually telling the others to "take out your cameras" because I felt this was going to go downhill, because I've heard so much about him.

Hayes: This school resource officer in particular you have already heard about before he came in, what do you mean you've heard things about him? What have you heard?

Kenny: Yes, sir he's known as Officer Slam around our school.  I've heard, in the past, he's slammed pregnant women, teenage girls, he's known for Slamming.

Hayes: Um.. one of the things that's so striking in this video is the other students in the room seem so quiet and scared and contained.  No one seems to be intervening.  Why do you think that was?

Kenny: They were scared, I was scared myself.  I felt the two grown men in the class were also scared themselves because who's seen anything like that? That's not normal for anyone to be handled like that, let alone a 16-year-old girl by a 300 lbs man.

Hayes: You at one point did get up to say, what were you saying, what happened?

Kenny: I was screaming, crying, like "Are you guys seriously letting this happen? This is not right, you guys know this isn't right. You guys are really letting this happen right now?" I guess they were in shock but still I felt like somebody in the class should have helped her.

Hayes: Did the teacher or the administrator say anything to the officer like "hey, this is excessive" or try to intercede in any way?

Kenny: Not at all, they were both quiet just like the kids.

Hayes: So everyone is sitting there in stunned silence, you start saying something, what happens next?

Kenny: And then the administrator, Coran Webb who was also in the class, starts telling me "Sit down Niya, be quiet Niya, put your phone away Niya."  And I'm like "No, no, this is not right. I can't believe ya'll are doing this to her."

Hayes: And then you then, are eventually arrested?

Kenny: Yes, sir.

So it seems that the most dangerous and threatening thing that a young woman can say in a classroom, is "No".

This video features an interview with another student from the same class, Tony Robinson, which starts at 1:48.

Robinson: At the beginning of class I thought it was just going to be a normal day, get to work, finish off, go to lunch.  Well, we were doing an assignment on the computer and I believe the girl had her phone out. And so our teacher, Mr. Long, came over, asked for the phone, she denied, she said "No". Then shortly after that he threatened to call an administrator, he did, he came, when he came the administrator tried to get her to move, and plead with her to get out of the seat, she still denied, because y'know she hadn't done anything wrong.

She said she had took her phone out, but it was only for a quick second, she was kinda begging, kinda apologetic about what happened and everything.  Next the administrator called the resource officer, Deputy Fields, and when he came in the first thing that he said was he asked my friend to move the desk.  And to me, that was a sign off, he could already tell what he was about to do. As far as the precaution he was gonna take for that student.  

So after he told him to move the desk, he did. The  video shows him shutting the Chromebook, her Chromebook, and putting it on another persons desk. He asked her again, "Will you move, will you move?"

And she said "No, I have not done anything wrong."  

He said, "I'm gonna treat you fairly".

And she said "I don't even know who you are." I believe you can hear that on the tape.  That is where it started right there, and I've never seen so nasty looking, so sick, to the point that other students [lifts hands as if to cover his face] are turning away, don't know what to do and are just scared for they['re] lives.  That's supposed to be somebody that's going to protect us, not somebody that we need to be scared of, and afraid. There's no justfiable reason for him as to why he had to do that to this girl.

This account squares closely with Kenny's and again it seems that the big crime that was committed was simply saying "No" to someone in authority who simply wouldn't accept that answer and move on, they have to show they were in control even over something as minor as a quick peek at a phone by one student when clearly several other students in that class also had phones.

There's more to the video including a ridiculous cat-fight between Don Lemon and CNN's Legal Analyst and former Federal Prosecutor Sonny Hostin.  Somehow Lemon thinks he knows the law better than she does, and that he has to "see more" before he can be a "judge" the officer's actions.

You actually don't need to know more, passive but adamant 16-year-old girl vs 300lbs hyper-aggressive Cop tells you everything, she posed no threat to him or anyone else other than to their delicate egos, but the thing is that when you do - when you listen to the other students who were right there in the room - most of what the pundits are saying is completely, totally, absolutely wrong about what was happening before this girl was brutally assault by a 300lbs 'roid raging power lifting unemployed ex-Deputy on a big giant power-trip.

Wed Oct 28, 2015 at  8:27 PM PT: Fox News decided that they want to take the advice ofMark Fuhrman on this issue, yes, really.

 He claims, amazingly enough that she threw herself backwards in the chair, which makes no damn sense at all.

“I’ll tell you why it’s not excessive,” Fuhrman said. “He verbalized, he made contact, he verbalized, he was polite. He requested her. He verbally did that.”

“The next level is he put a hand on her,” he continued. “She escalated it from there. He used soft control. He threw her on the ground, he handcuffed her. He didn’t use mace. He didn’t use a Taser. He didn’t use a stick. He didn’t kick her. He didn’t hit her. He didn’t choke her. He used a minimal amount of force necessary to effect an arrest.”

All of that is, to put it mildly, bullshit.