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The investigation is complete. his name is ben fields. he's one of two resource officers at the school. no injuries reported according to the spokesperson. the sheriff is currently out of town at a conference. he was shown the video and "he was very disturbed by what he saw." >> the sheriff is also asking for everyone to exercise patience at this time as this is being fully investigated. he's not going to leave any stone unturned checking out exactly what took place and what happened. as well as the sheriff and the school district, they're going to come together and they will take appropriate ...

Wanting to be a part, having concer concerns. and it's just -- it goes from issues with accommodations, not being followed with regard to ieps and 504 plans to just overt disregard of these accommodations to the point of where we have an alternative school, alternative program, rather, that is all really populated by african-american males. >> let me point out, going back to this case that is being investigated, the officer ben fields, apparently had two legal incidents, 2013, named a defendant in the federal case claiming that he had unfairly and recklessly targets african-american students w...

An incident back in 2007. he and several other officers were sued and were accused of excessive force. again, the deputy won that case. the second lawsuit is still pending. there, a student sued deputy fields and other school officials for that incident in 2013 claiming that in part, fields unfairly and recklessly targets african-american students. now, fields and the other defendants deny any wrongdoing in that case. they presented evidence to dispute those allegations but again, that case is still pending. back to you. >> we are just learning now that from the richland county sheriff's offic...

That's what i have to look for. >> reporter: why would a deputy who received the district's highest honor last year use such force? one student in the room writes on social media the officer is a cool dude. he is not racist. girl was asked to put her phone away but told teacher no and administrator was called, asked her to come to his office. he told him know. then called the resource officer. he asked her nicely to get up, over and over. he did nothing wrong. the incident has caused anger and revived long-held concerns about the treatment of young african-americans in the school district here...

The officer was called to escort the student out. the incident was captured on cell phone video by another student in the classroom. the student was detained and released reportedly uninjured into her paintrents' custody. the officer is senior deputy ben fields with the richland county sheriff's department. he has been placed on administrative leave and declined to comment. nbc's gabe gutierrez joins me with more from columbia, south carolina. i know we have to be careful when talking about cell phone video, but just from what we saw, it seemed to be a questionable use of force against a teena...