Nearly 2,200 people have been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses
LOS ANGELES — Police have arrested nearly 2,200 people in recent weeks during pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the United States, sometimes using riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash devices to clear tent camps and occupied buildings. An officer accidentally fired his gun inside a Columbia University administration building while clearing protesters camped inside, authorities said.
No one was injured as a result of the officer’s error late Tuesday in Hamilton Hall on Columbia’s campus, the NYPD said Thursday. He attempted to use the flashlight currently attached to his gun and instead fired a single bullet that hit a frame on the wall.
There were other officers but no students in the immediate area, officials said. Body camera footage shows when the officer’s gun went off, but the district attorney’s office is conducting an investigation, a standard practice.
More than 100 people were taken into custody during the Columbia crackdown, just a fraction of the total number of arrests resulting from recent campus protests over the war between Israel and Hamas. A tally by The Associated Press recorded at least 56 arrests at 43 different U.S. colleges or universities since April 18. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
On Thursday morning, officers advanced on a crowd of demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, eventually taking at least 200 demonstrators into custody after hundreds defied orders to leave. Some formed human chains as police fired flash bangs to disperse the crowd. Police tore down a fortified encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and dumpsters, then pulled down canopies and tents.
As at UCLA, tent camps of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread to other campuses across the country in a student movement unlike any this century. Others.
Israel has branded the protests as anti-Semitic, while Israel’s critics say it is using the accusations to silence the opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic comments or violent threats, protest organizers — some of whom are Jewish — call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
President Joe Biden on Thursday defended students’ right to peaceful protest but denounced the disorder in recent days.
The demonstrations began in Columbia on April 17, with students calling for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on October 7.
On April 18, the NYPD cleared Columbia’s original encampment and arrested approximately 100 protesters. The demonstrators set up new tents, defied threats of suspension, and escalated their actions early Tuesday by occupying Hamilton Hall, an administration building similarly seized in 1968 by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
About twenty hours later, officers stormed the hall. Video showed police with zip ties and riot shields pouring through a second-floor window. Police had said demonstrators inside offered no substantial resistance.
The officer’s gun went off at 9:38 p.m., the NYPD said, about 10 minutes after police poured into Hamilton Hall. The department has not named the officer, whose actions were first reported Thursday by news station The City.
The confrontations at UCLA also took place over several days this week. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block told alumni on a phone call Thursday afternoon that the trouble began after a permitted pro-Israel rally was held on campus Sunday and fighting broke out and “live mice” were thrown into the pro-Palestinian camp later that day .
In the following days, administrators tried to find a peaceful resolution with encampment members and expected things to remain stable, Block said.
That changed late Tuesday, he said, when counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment. Campus administrators and police did not intervene or call for reinforcements for hours. No one was arrested that night, but at least fifteen protesters were injured. The delayed response drew criticism from political leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and officials promised an independent review.
By Wednesday, the encampment had become “much more of a bunker” and there was no other solution than to have police dismantle it, Block said.
The hours-long standoff began Thursday morning when officers warned over loudspeakers that arrests would be made if the crowd – at the time more than a thousand people both inside and outside the encampment – did not disperse. Hundreds left voluntarily, while more than 200 more stayed behind and were eventually taken into custody.
Meanwhile, protest camps at other schools in the US have been cleared by police — leading to more arrests — or voluntarily closed. But officials at the University of Minnesota reached an agreement with protesters not to disrupt commencement, and similar compromises have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island.
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Watson reported from San Diego, Keller from Albuquerque, New Mexico and Thompson from Buffalo, New York. Associated Press journalists from around the country contributed to this report, including Kavish Harjai, Krysta Fauria, Leslie Ambriz, John Antczak, Lisa Baumann, Jae C. Hong, Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Sarah Brumfield, Philip Marcelo, Steve Karnowski and Gene Johnson.