SC officer fired for body-slamming girl

JUST IN: DOJ opens investigation into video of school resource officer grabbing student: https://t.co/wIGvhqXFjS https://t.co/PodRBDVFBr

— ABC News (@ABC) October 27, 2015

A South Carolina police officer was fired Wednesday after throwing a female high school student to the ground two days before.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced that his office is terminating Deputy Ben Fields over Monday morning’s incident at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C.

{mosads}“Deputy Ben Fields did wrong this past Monday,” Lott said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

“The maneuver that he used is not based on our training and is not acceptable,” he said. “That is not a proper technique and should not be used in law enforcement. We are taking responsibility for that.”

Video footage emerged Monday showing Fields aggressively confronting a disruptive student at Spring Valley High.

Fields, who is white, overturned the teenager’s desk when she refused to leave class. He then dragged the girl, who is black, across the floor and arrested her for disturbing school.

Lott said on Wednesday that both sides were at fault in the recorded confrontation, which has gone viral on social media.

“Denying that this is a terrible incident is not going to change anything,” he told reporters in Columbia. “Sometimes young people make bad decisions. Police officers make mistakes, too, and they need to be held accountable. They are human.”

The Department of Justice and the FBI’s South Carolina field office are now investigating the incident for possible civil rights violations.

Lott said Wednesday that he hopes Columbia remains a peaceful community while the federal agencies probe Fields’s actions.

“This one incident is not going to tear us down,” he said of the relationship between citizens and law enforcement officials. “We are not going to let this destroy what we have built over so many years.”

Several Democratic presidential candidates condemned Fields’s actions this week.

“There is no excuse for violence inside a school,” tweeted Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Tuesday morning.

“I would be ripped ballistic if someone did that to my daughter,” former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) said.  “I mean, that’s not appropriate behavior for any adult to treat a kid.”