Black parents at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C., and civil rights leaders have joined together in a call for charges to be removed against a 16-year-old student who was assaulted by a school resource officer who yanked her from her desk and tossed her across the floor in October, according to the Associated Press. A video of the attack went viral, generating nationwide focous on the assault.
The group says it's "unfair and unacceptable" that the student and her 18-year-old classmate, who taped the incident, were the only people charged on the day of the attack by Richland County Deputy Ben Fields, the report says. Both girls were charged with disturbing schools and released to their parents, the report says.
Fields was later fired in the case, which many said smacked of institutional racism. The students are black and Fields is white.
"If any one of us would have done a youngster or even an adult like that, we would be in jail that day," pastor and activist Thomas Dixon told the news outlet.
Dixon and the others presented a petition with thousands of names from around the country to South Carolina's 5th Judicial Court Solicitor Dan Johnson, asking him to drop the misdemeanor "disturbing schools" charges against the teens.
Johnson said in a statement Wednesday that he won't "do anything with the case until the FBI finishes its investigation into Fields," writes AP.
Read more at Yahoo! News.