A white Florida Police officer has been sacked after a video surfaced on social media of him yanking a middle school student by the hair.
Authorities have not identified the officer involved in the incident.
Brewing public anger forced the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to release the bodycam footage of the incident Friday, ABC News reports.
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Officers are shown in the video responding to a fight that broke out between students outside Westridge Middle School in Orlando, Florida. The video shows one deputy holding a girl against the trunk of a car, with her arms held behind her back.
The white officer then grabs the girl, who is black, by a hair scarf, pulling her head back and saying, “You’re the one who started this s— at school. … I’m tired of this s—.”
He then drags the girl to a police car and puts her in the back seat. She was briefly detained before being released.
The officer was also captured in the footage yelling at bystanders after the incident saying: “Back off, I’m tired of everybody here. This is because you’re silly. You’re all stupid little children.”
At a press conference on Friday, Orange County Sheriff John Mina described the officer’s conduct as “out of control.”
“I am extremely upset, disappointed and outraged by the conduct of our deputy sheriff in this instance,” Mina said. “I want the community to know that this type of behavior is not going to be tolerated at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.”
Mina said he was made aware of the video on Friday morning, and that after reviewing it and footage from the department’s body cameras, the decision was made to terminate the officer’s employment.
Meanwhile, a sheriff’s deputy attached to a public school in same Florida has been arrested on child abuse charges without great bodily harm.
Deputy Willard Miller of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office was charged Tuesday after surveillance footage caught him slamming a 15-year-old student on the ground.
Sheriff Gregory Tony released the footage of the incident that occurred on September 25 at Cross Creek School in Pompano Beach, Fla., and it starts with the student and Deputy Miller standing in a room together. Two others are sitting on chairs. The white teenager walks up behind the sheriff’s deputy and nudges him in the back of the knee with her foot causing him to buckle while watching on his phone.
Deputy Miller, 38, can be seen talking to the girl in the audio-less footage for a minute before grabbing her by the neck, slams her on her back, flips her over onto her stomach and locks her down while pinning her wrists together.
Addressing a news conference Tuesday to announce the arrest of Deputy Miller, Sheriff Tony said what was said in the room didn’t matter. “The way the deputy responds, for whatever occurred, whatever type of verbal dialogue was going on, it makes no sense and it wasn’t necessary,” he said.
“I would hope that every cop in America would disagree with that type of response,” he added.
