When a video went viral last week that showed a South Carolina sheriff’s deputy throwing a teenage girl to the ground after she refused to leave a classroom, the incident reignited a national debate about the appropriate use of police force.
For Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger, the arrest of the student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, which was captured on video by other students, resulted in another opportunity for the public to unfairly scrutinize the actions of all police officers.
“Every police officer is painted with that broad brush,” Manger said. “It can be demoralizing. It can be demoralizing for my cops. It can be demoralizing for me.”
While Manger did not condone the actions of sheriff’s deputy Ben Fields, he said during an interview Thursday with Bethesda Beat he understands the difficult situation faced by the officer when the student refused to leave the school after being told repeatedly by school staff to do so. By law, the girl became a trespasser and was subject to arrest when she refused to leave, he said.
Manger said that departments across the country train their officers to act appropriately, emphasize de-escalation and also remind them that they’re only one bad incident away from being launched into the public’s attention. But he also criticized the media for cherry-picking stories of alleged police brutality that can damage the reputations of all police officers.
“In some ways I feel for that deputy. I don’t know anything about him. I read in the paper today that he had had prior complaints, so maybe he’s a knucklehead,” Manger said, noting that trying to take an unwilling person into custody can be difficult and appear violent to others. “I have been involved in some knock-down, dragged-out fights with somebody who just wasn’t going to go to jail. Now it was never a high school-aged girl and that certainly makes a difference.”
Manger, who also serves as the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Associations, which represents the chiefs and sheriffs of the largest 66 law enforcement agencies in the United States, also noted the importance of giving police an opportunity to provide perspective on what can be very difficult decisions that have to be made quickly.
“I think these are conversations that need to happen. People need to hear all sides of an issue to really be informed about it,” Manger said. “I think some of that is critically missing in what [the public] reads and hears.”
In the South Carolina incident, Fields was called to a classroom after the girl refused requests by school staff to leave the school, according to news reports. Manger said that applying other measures—such as allowing the student to remain and suspending her the next day rather than removing her immediately—would have sent the wrong message to students.
“I read an editorial in [The Washington Post] and they had their own advice about how it should have been handled, that the principal should have said, ‘OK, you can’t come back tomorrow,’ you know, suspend the kid,” Manger said. “OK, well, what message does that send? That kid won… . And once you involve the police, oh my god, this is where a lot of cops, they now get thrust into the situation. [Fields] didn’t ask to be there. So now he’s going to just turn and walk away after he told this girl, ‘You have to leave?’ She said ‘I’m not leaving,’ OK, and he walks out? I’m not sure that’s a good resolution.”
Manger, who has been a police chief for 18 years, first in Fairfax County and for about 12 years in Montgomery, said that Fields probably should have waited for a second officer or perhaps even a female officer to arrive and help.
“I guess there’s no rush,” Manger said. “So what if it takes five minutes, 10 minutes, an hour to get the girl out of there, you get her out eventually.”
Sheriff Lett said the girl suffered a rug burn in the arrest, but the girl’s attorney told ABC’s Good Morning America Oct. 27 that she has a cast on her arm as well as neck and back injuries.
During an interview with Bethesda Beat, Manger said police officers assigned to Montgomery County public high schools make very few arrests—about one per month—and that he’s happy with the local program. He noted that officers get to know students and often receive information, such as about pending fights, that they can then use to prevent incidents. Some also serve as coaches of sports teams.
He said he’d like the school resource officer program to be expanded so that officers are placed in middle schools as well.
“These cops act as mentors,” Manger said. “They teach classes on crime and safety and so I think it’s been a great value.”
Manger also discussed a 2013 incident in which a school resource officer used a Taser to subdue a 16-year-old girl at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. In that incident, the girl refused to go inside the school and go to class, according to news reports from that time. When a female officer tried to take the student inside, the girl reportedly punched and kicked the officer. At that point the officer used her Taser to subdue the student.
“It was an appropriate use of force,” Manger said. “It wasn’t pretty, it looked terrible… [But] do we have a different set of rules for high school students? Are they allowed to violently assault a police officer? The answer is no. The officer can defend themselves.”
