Editing Lincoln County, North Carolina (section)

==Controversy==
In February 2020, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department received media attention when surveillance video was released showing first a pair of [[Atrium Health]] security guards assaulting a sixteen-year-old boy brought to the hospital's emergency room. When another pair of sheriff's deputies arrived, video shows one of the deputies hitting the boy, now handcuffed, in the face twice as the boy spit blood pooling in his mouth after being tackled from behind by security guards. The deputy then aggressively approached the mother, yelling at her before being pulled to the ground by a second deputy, In an interview with WBTV, Lincoln County Sheriff [[Bill Beam]] defended his deputies saying they did nothing wrong, denying that the officer struck the boy or that the officer was physically restrained by two additional sheriff's deputies.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wbtv.com/video/2020/02/14/full-interview-lincoln-county-sheriff-bill-beam-teen-assaulted-outside-er/|title=FULL INTERVIEW: Lincoln County Sheriff Bill Beam on teen assaulted outside ER|website=WBTV|language=en-US|access-date=February 14, 2020}}</ref> The boy was arrested and charged with felony assault on a police officer.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wbtv.com/2020/02/14/video-shows-teen-assaulted-by-atrium-security-lincoln-co-sheriffs-deputy-outside-er/|title=Video shows teen assaulted by Atrium security, Lincoln Co. sheriff’s deputy outside ER|last=Ochsner|first=Nick|website=WBTV|language=en-US|access-date=February 14, 2020}}</ref>