A classroom incident for adults to learn from

The Richland County, N.C., sheriff’s deputy caught on video Monday slamming down a 16-year-old female student and flinging her across a classroom floor before arresting her was fired from his job as a school resource officer on Wednesday.

The FBI and Columbia, S.C., school officials are investigating the incident. Anyone who watches the viral Internet video can easily tell that it was horribly wrong. The investigations will reveal the details.

The girl was clearly wrong in refusing requests from her teacher, a school administrator and the officer to leave the classroom.

It’s important for the rest of us to learn from this incident, also. Particularly, since many of our schools have resource officers assigned to them, we must examine whether this officer should have been involved at all.

Adults could have de-escalated the situation by removing other students from the room — leave one there to record everything on video, if you wish — then talking to the girl in a less-confrontational setting.

Discipline was necessary, perhaps even an arrest. But not violence.

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "A classroom incident for adults to learn from."