Raven-Symone, who made news only a few weeks ago for her remarks about “ghetto” names, cemented herself as a straight-up awful person this morning by defending the officer who was caught on video assaulting a Spring Valley High School student.
While Raven-Symone conceded during her comments on The View that the officer used what she termed a “ridiculous” amount of force, she emphasized that the girl’s behavior contributed to her assault.
“The girl was told multiple times to get off the phone. There’s not right or reason for him to be doing this type of harm, that’s ridiculous,” she said. “But at the same time, you gotta follow the rules in school. First of all, why are there cellphones in school? This shouldn’t even be a problem to begin with, and he shouldn’t have been acting like that on top of it.”
According to law enforcement and school officials, the officer was called into the classroom over cell phone usage. When one student did not comply with the teacher’s request that she put away her phone, and then refused the teacher’s demand that she leave the classroom, the school’s resource officer called in Officer Ben Fields. Video quickly surfaced of what happened next: Fields grabbed the student by the neck, flipped over her desk with her still in it, and dragged her out of the classroom. Fields, who is no stranger to assaulting students, has since been fired.
As a parent of three high school students, I can assure Raven-Symone that cell phones are in the hands of almost every high school student every day. They are also confiscated on a daily basis for inappropriate use during class. What does not happen every day is an assault of a child by a law enforcement officer while in school — and there is no justification for Fields’ behavior. The student made a mistake (as teenagers often do), and she deserved appropriate consequences for her mistake, such as losing cell phone access, going to the principal’s office, and perhaps even an in-school suspension. What she did not deserve was to be physically assaulted in school, and Raven-Symone should know better than to blame the victim.
Black women’s lives matter, and they do not require perfection for that to be true.
