(Twitter/ahunna)
An investigation is underway after a video was posted to Twitter on Tuesday showing a girl being slammed to the ground by a police officer at a school in North Carolina.
The brief video, posted by @ahunnaaa_, shows an officer lifting the girl off the ground and then dropping her down. The incident occurred at Rolesville High School in Wake County.
You can watch the video below:
THIS. IS. NOT OKAY. #rolesvillehigh
The officer and the girl in the video have not been identified. Officials said the officer has been placed on administrative leave while an investigation is completed, WTVD-TV reports.
The officer is a school resource officer and has been with the department since 2013, officials said. Rolesville’s police chief has not yet commented, but plans to speak about it Tuesday night after a previously scheduled town meeting, WTVD reports.
The video does not show what led up to the officer throwing the girl down. A witness told WTVD-TV two girls, who are not seen in the video, were involved in a fight, and the girl who was thrown down was trying to break it up.
A witness told WNCN-TV, the girl “was trying to defend her sister and to break things up.”
Another video was later posted on social media showing the fight itself. You can watch that video below:
#BreakingNews – UPDATE – Rolesville High student shares video of fight that led to another student getting slammed to the ground by officer
It happened about 7:10 a.m. Tuesday.
Lisa Luten, spokesperson for Wake County Schools, told the news station, “We are in the process of working with Rolesville Police Department to gather all of the details around this incident.”
Luten told the Raleigh News & Observer the video “does raise questions.”
Rolesville Mayor Frank Eagles told WNCN-TV there is body camera footage of the incident. That video has not yet been released. Eagles said there are two school resource officers assigned to the high school, and there may be footage from both officers.
The North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union told the News & Observer it is investigating the incident.
“We’re very disturbed by what we saw in the video,” Irena Como, staff attorney for the ACLU of North Carolina, told the newspaper. “This kind of force, especially with kids in schools, in never justified.”
The incident is similar to others in schools involving police officers and students, most notably an incident last year in South Carolina. Then-Richland County Deputy Ben Fields was recorded grabbing a girl at her desk and throwing her to the ground.
Fields was not criminally charged, but was fired from his job.
After the video of Tuesday’s incident was shared online, several Twitter users re-posted a video of an incident in October 2016 involving Rolesville Police and a high school student.
You can watch that video below:
Police and school officials have not commented about the second video.
