Officer Ben Fields from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina was fired, a school official announced on October 28, following several viral videos that showed him pulling a black female student, still in her desk, onto the floor and then throwing her to the floor again. The incident reached national headlines as people declared the scene a violent escalation of a high school disciplinary issue, and an indication of the harsher treatment black students receive compared to their white peers. An attorney representing the student alleges that her arm was broken in the incident.

Following the announcement of Fields’s removal, over 100 students at the high school staged a walk-out in protest of his removal and in support of the officer. Many of them claimed that although they did not consider his use of force justified, they considered his firing unjust.

Since the altercation went public, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have opened up investigations into the case to look into whether federal laws were violated.

Information for this article was taken from www.msnbc.com