Don: ‘I don’t care who you are, you don’t smack a cop’

Context is everything. And that is what people have been searching for ever since the video of a violent interaction between a deputy and a student in South Carolina went viral.

It’s something that threw a twist into KIRO Radio’s Ron and Don Show that had one host changing sides, and the other doubling down on his position.

Richland County Deputy Ben Fields, a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School was caught on video tearing a female student out of her desk, tossing her across the room, throwing her to the ground, and arresting her. The violent interaction caught on more than one cellphone has gone viral and is causing many people to ask if the take-down was necessary.

“I want to throw up,” Sheriff Leon Lott told the press about the video. “When you see that initial video.”

Deputy Fields has been banned from all school property while an investigation is underway. He has been involved in two lawsuits in the past 10 years. One involves his alleged use of excessive force. He has also been given a Culture of Excellence Award for his work at the school.

Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill completely empathized with the girl, but that changed when it was discovered she had reached up to hit the officer right after he tore her out of her desk.

Ron Upshaw: It’s in a high school classroom. You see students sitting in at their desks. One student has a laptop, other students have their books. It’s a regular-looking classroom. And a white police officer walks down the row next to the door, he approaches a female student, who happens to be black. And she is sitting in her desk, kind of slouched down in her desk. And the officer was called because the student was allegedly being disruptive in class and refusing to leave; the teacher was trying to eject her from class.

You can hear him say, “You can either come with me or I am going to make you.”

This officer is a very large guy. There are photos of him online now bench pressing over 600 pounds, he can squat over 900 pounds and he’s a strength coach.

Don O’Neill: Would there be a reason for the officer to respond in that way, so you would look at that and say, “Oh OK. I get it. I understand”? Let’s say she called him a name … I still don’t think that response is appropriate. Let’s say that you spit in the officer’s face … well that’s assault and they could certainly go hands-on. But I’m not sure if you should go hands-on like that … the other thing would be if the girl punched him or slapped him. When I looked at the video I didn’t see that.

When you look at the video, with the only context that we have, those seconds, I can’t see any type of reason why this officer responded in that way.

RU: To me, context is king. You are in a classroom, it’s a controlled environment. Let’s say it’s a group of teenagers and it’s a fight in a convenience store. Then yeah. An unsecured situation, if a cop needs to grab a student and put her to the ground, [then yes].

DO: I’ll give you a better example. It was a number of years ago, down in the Central District. There was a fight going on. A girl punched an officer and he punched her back as a result of that.

RU: In a high school it’s different. She is passive. He can see her. She didn’t have a weapon. She was sitting in her chair … think about what it’s like in high school and to be embarrassed and be called out by a police officer. I think if he leans down and gets eyeball to eyeball and says, “Listen, your teacher wants you to go. Let’s not make a scene. I don’t want to arrest you. Just come with me,” … he shows some kind of control with that teenager. Then I think this would have a completely different ending. If she then doesn’t want to move, then you escalate it slowly.

He is very, very strong. He throws her around like a rag doll. It seems upper excessive.

DO: I could grab your hand and make you get up right now and not cause a scene.

RU: Sure. Using pressure points.

DO: Yeah. There’s a very easy way to get someone to stand up and comply. He overreacted. A cop like that makes it very hard for police officers to be police officers. And to be respected in our communities. Because of cops like that, who get caught on video, and they should, and they’re doing bad things to kids. It doesn’t mean that kids can’t kill you, and that kids can’t fight back, and that kids sometimes don’t belong on the floor with a knee in the back and handcuffs on. However, in this case, with the little context we have, it doesn’t make sense.

Ron and Don then learned, in another video, that the girl attempted to strike the deputy after he pulled her back out of her desk. It was mistakenly reported that she hit him first, which Ron and Don then addressed.

DO: We were looking for context … if she hit him, and they say there’s a video where she is assaulting this deputy with a closed fist, they haven’t released the video but they say they have the video, does that change things for you, Ron?

RU: Absolutely not … In a classroom setting, where she is seated, and the size and power differential is huge; she is a young lady and he a very big, strong guy … however much force she could generate would be nothing to him.

DO: If she really smacked him, then I have no problem with what he did. He should have absolutely have done what he did … if you are a kid, I don’t care who you are, you don’t smack a cop. What it shows her and everybody else in that room, that you don’t smack a cop and you don’t smack authority. If he allows her to smack him in front of all those other kids, guess what? The next kid is going to smack him, the next kid is going to knife him, and the next kid is going to shoot him.

RU: No … if you are a kid in a school, what would cause you to disobey your teacher, cause a disturbance, and disobey a police officer? This officer, he works in the school. They didn’t call 911 and he drove in. This is a guy experienced in a school. You should know and be trained that when a kid displays all these distress signals [something else is going on] … be the adult in the room.

DO: Be the punching bag for kids.

RU: The kid is in distress. I’ve worked with a lot of teens. You’ve worked with a lot of teens. They don’t behave like this in a vacuum. They don’t wake up and say, “I’m going to smack a cop.” As an adult working with students, I believe you should have the maturity to say, “There’s more going on.”

DO: You’re going to find a lot of people who don’t want to be cops because they don’t want to be assaulted. Kids don’t get to assault cops.

RU: You need to be the adult in the room…just be humane. This is not a brawl at a bar at 2 a.m. You’re in a classroom in a high school. Be a human being and get this girls some attention and don’t throw her around like a rag doll.