A North Carolina school resource officer has been fired after he was captured on video assaulting an 11-year-old student, CNN reports.
Lt. James Goolsby with the Vance County Sheriff’s Office announced the officer’s termination on Friday.
According to CNN, the video shows the officer “grabbing and slamming the child to the ground, then picking him up and doing it again before yanking the child up and continuing to walk down the hall.” The school alerted the sheriff’s office within minutes of the incident occurring.
“It’s obvious that the child was assaulted,” Jason Spriggs, Henderson City Council member, said in a Facebook Live video. “And the video’s rough. It really strikes home and a lot of people are upset.”
According to WSOCTV, the fired resource officer—who had been placed on paid administrative leave after the violent incident—had worked with the sheriff’s office for two years.
According to a joint report titled “We Came to Learn: A Call to Action for Police-Free Schools,” by the Advancement Project and the Alliance for Educational Justice, school policing has failed to make students of color safer, while increasing punitive practices against Black and Brown students.