How police agencies are responding to campus Israel-Gaza war protests – The Washington Post
Posted By admin on April 29, 2024
At least 900 protesters have been arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses in the last 10 days, according to a Washington Post tally, the largest police response to campus activism in years and one that experts say poses myriad potential challenges for law enforcement agencies.
Mass demonstrations on campuses ranged from peaceful sit-ins on sun-soaked grassy malls to vitriolic confrontations with counterprotesters. To remove protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and universities to divest from Israeli financial interests, some administrators turned to police, pointing to numerous reports of hate, antisemitic speech and violence that marred some demonstrations.
On some campuses, law enforcement offered repeated warnings and conducted cordial, orderly arrests. On others, police and demonstrators engaged in physical confrontations, with officers employing some of the same tools and tactics used to quell riots and demonstrations four years ago, when thousands marched through the streets of U.S. cities after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd.
At Emory University last week, Atlanta police said officers used chemical irritants to clear an encampment, and a Georgia State Patrol officer was captured on video using a stun gun to subdue a man on the ground. The agency said the man was resisting arrest. In Boston, the Northeastern University police cleared an encampment Saturday after a shout of Kill the Jews was heard. A witness posted on social media that the shout came from a pro-Israel counterprotester. School officials said the demonstration had been infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern.
The national wave of campus arrests kicked off on April 18, when Columbia University President Minouche Shafik wrote a letter to New York police requesting help to clear the student demonstrators.
The decision led to the arrests of more than 100 people on the Manhattan campus and inspired fresh waves of protests across the country.
Phillip Atiba Solomon, a Yale professor of psychology and African American studies, and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, attributed the swift interdiction on several campuses in part to the mounting political pressure on university presidents to avoid appearing as if they are appeasing anti-Israel demonstrators.
Those presidents watched the careers of former Harvard president Claudine Gay and former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill unravel late last year after both were accused of antisemitism for their comments on how to deal with protesters, Solomon said, and want to avoid a similar fate. Shafik was questioned about antisemitism on campus by lawmakers on Capitol Hill the day before she called in police.
Presidents are trying to figure out how to deal with what seems like a fracturing on the political left, tons of pressure on the political right, some reasonable arguments students say they dont feel safe, Solomon said. And commencement is coming up. So they call the police.
He cautioned that such action sends chills to the academic environment and alienates students, and could reignite tensions between police and protesters that escalated during the racial justice demonstrations.
Any university who is calling law enforcement this weekend and beyond is asking for a tragedy, Solomon said.
The equation is complicated by the shifting nature of youth-driven protests, which have become more difficult for law enforcement to manage in the age of social media, experts said.
Policing guidelines for managing civil disobedience that were taught for decades have been rendered moot. Fractured and leaderless protest movements make negotiations useless in many scenarios; the ability to spontaneously and anonymously organize protest action online hampers law enforcements ability to prepare; and an influx of bad actors often masked seeking to escalate conflicts with police can turn scenes violent in an instant.
These are more dynamic events than any time in history, said Eugene ODonnell, a criminal justice professor at John Jay College in New York. Every day that goes by, there is more sophistication that makes them problematic. It is more their playing field than ever before.
Four days after the Columbia arrests, city police were called onto the campus of New York University, also at the request of university leaders. Dozens of students occupied a plaza at the university, and several hundred demonstrators and onlookers formed a ring around the encampment to protect them.
When police moved to clear the area on April 22, intense clashes broke out. Several objects, including water bottles, were thrown at the police. Police reported 120 arrests.
University of Southern California administrators canceled next months main commencement ceremony after police arrested dozens of people late Wednesday. At Emerson College in Boston, police said they arrested 108 people during a confrontation in which four officers were injured in the early hours of Thursday.
Many law enforcement agencies feel their hands are tied when universities declare that students and others breaking rules on campus are trespassing, experts said. When university presidents call, the police typically answer without regard for optics.
But that did not happen at one university in the nations capital.
At George Washington University, university leadership asked D.C. police to arrest protesters for trespassing and were denied, The Post reported late Friday.
Two officials familiar with the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss them, said police officials concluded that taking enforcement action against a small number of peaceful protesters did not align with the departments interests.
In many locales, todays law enforcement leaders are far less willing to take action against protesters since the racial justice unrest of 2020, ODonnell said.
Policing is a political institution now, and there is no worse time to be an officer in uniform than at a protest right now, ODonnell said. The people who have failed to lead on campuses now are dumping this in the laps of the police.
At least one university scrambled to construct the legal grounds to remove protesters before calling police.
Indiana University administrators changed course on a 55-year-old campus policy that allowed temporary structures like tents and signs without a permit in Dunn Meadow, a sprawling 20-acre park on the universitys main campus, except during overnight hours. A university spokesperson said the policy includes a provision that allows changes in the rule as needed and officials did so to balance free speech and safety.
On Thursday, campus police arrested 34 people, with charges ranging from trespassing and resisting law enforcement to battery on a public safety official, said Indiana University police spokeswoman Hannah Skibba.
To combat strategic disadvantages inherent to modern protests, some law enforcement agencies have responded in recent years with an overwhelming show of force, according to policing experts, who see the tactic as an effort to cow protesters with large numbers of personnel and fearsome armor.
At the University of Texas at Austin, state troopers in riot gear helped detain 57 protesters who were arrested by campus police on Wednesday, drawing praise from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
But local prosecutors dropped the charges due to deficiencies in the charging documents, a Travis County Attorney spokesperson said.
George Lobb, who volunteered with 15 other lawyers to represent protesters through the Austin Lawyers Guild, said there was no violence at the protest until the state police showed up. He also noted that state universities in Arlington and San Antonio had protests the same day but no police crackdowns or arrests.
He faulted the university president for poor leadership and not realizing when you call in the Pretorian guard, goon squad, youre going to get goon squad behavior.
Ammer Qaddumi, 21, of Houston, a junior economics and government major who is Palestinian American, was among those taken into custody by police.
The arrests themselves were unlawful, Qaddumi said while participating in a protest on the campus mall Friday afternoon, the same spot where he had been detained days before. About a dozen campus police officers looked on from a distance.
The fact that UTs default response was police force instead of trying to understand student grievances, that is the most egregious thing, he said. Its a blatant violation of our right to protest and free speech.
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How police agencies are responding to campus Israel-Gaza war protests - The Washington Post
