Turns out that even Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott agrees with those of us who instinctively knew what the South Carolina classroom cop did was wrong:

She continued to refuse, and at that point the video shows the deputy flipping the teen backward and then throwing her across the room. At that point, Lott said, Fields did not use proper procedure.

“I can tell you what he should not have done: He should not have thrown that student,” Lott said during a news conference.

And so the classroom cop has been fired:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A deputy was fired Wednesday after video showed him flipping a teen backward out of her desk and tossing her across a classroom, with the sheriff saying the officer did not follow proper procedures and training.

Note that last par: the sheriff—not “bleeding heart libs” or “Black Lives Matter” or supposed foot soldiers in the non-existent “war on cops”—said that the officer did not follow procedure or training. The sheriff said that.

The sheriff did not say that non-compliance by a student justifies treating a student the way the classroom cop did.  That’s because the sheriff knows that’s not true, and all of us who saw the video and shared it and expressed our outrage also know that’s not true.  But police state defenders like Harry Houck want very badly for non-compliance to justify violence by cops, as he noted in a CNN interview we wrote about yesterday:

“It’s as a result of a failure to comply. If that girl got out of the car — got out of the seat when she was told, there would be no problem,” Houck insisted. “But apparently she had no respect for the school, no respect for her teacher, probably has no respect at home or on the street, and that’s why she acted the way she did.”

This is great news, but imagine if there had been no video, and no outrage on social media.  This classroom cop would still be prowling the halls, threatening the very people he was supposed to protect.  So if that’s what it takes to keep the police state in check (and maybe even begin to wither away), always keep your phone at the ready, have a YouTube account, and keep ample space available for recording at all times.