Hillary Clinton Says Assault At Spring Valley High Can’t Be Justified
Hillary Clinton joined SiriusXM’s Joe Madison on Monday to discuss criticism of her criminal justice platform as well as the black teenager who was thrown from her desk by a school resource officer in Columbia, South Carolina, last week.
The Democratic front-runner said she was disturbed by the video of former Spring Valley High School resource officer Ben Fields manhandling a 16-year-old student known only as Shakara.
“The adults in a school should be modeling appropriate behavior to deal with any disciplinary issues that might arise, and that was clearly not the case in the incident we have seen in the school in South Carolina,” she said.
Critics have characterized Fields' actions as assault, and the footage has led the FBI and Department of Justice to launch investigations into his conduct. Fields, who was also a sheriff's deputy in Richland County, South Carolina, was fired Wednesday after a 48-hour investigation.
Todd Rutherford, a South Carolina congressman and Shakara’s attorney, told the New York Daily News that the girl is currently in foster care. Fields, who is known around school as “Officer Slam,” was called into the classroom because Shakara was, allegedly, being disruptive and wouldn’t put away her cell phone fast enough during math class.
Clinton said school administrators and teachers should develop alternative measures to handle students who are being “difficult.”
“I don’t know the facts around the young woman who was thrown to the floor -- as we all saw -- but whatever the facts are, it doesn’t justify behavior like that,” she said. “And it’s important that we all take a deep breath here and try to understand better how to deal with kids who may have different challenges in their lives, and they need to be addressed in a more effective way.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-spring-valley_56379082e4b0c66bae5d13ec
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