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SvennoJ on 01 May 2024
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Colombia University

Police called in by Columbia to ‘take back their campus’: NYPD official

Kaz Daughtry, the deputy commissioner of operations at the New York Police Department (NYPD), posted on X overnight that Columbia University had requested the police to help “take back their campus.”

In the post, he included videos and photos of the incident and said that the NYPD were “dispersing the unlawful encampment and persons barricaded inside of university buildings and restoring order”.








Columbia’s Hamilton Hall: A history of student action at Gaza protest hub

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/columbias-hamilton-hall-a-history-of-student-action-at-gaza-protest-hub

Hamilton Hall, the academic building at Columbia University that students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza occupied early on April 30, has a long history of student protests.

Over the past half-century, students have barricaded themselves there in protest at pivotal moments in history, including the Vietnam War and the growing global momentum against apartheid in South Africa.

Protesters dubbed the building “Mandela Hall” in honour of the South African liberation leader during the 1985 student blockade. Echoing the 1985 protests, students who took over the building on Tuesday renamed it “Hind’s Hall” in honour of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed alongside her family by Israeli forces in Gaza.


Jewish group denounces NY police over Columbia raid

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has condemned the New York Police Department’s actions against more than 50 Columbia and Barnard students peacefully occupying a building, as well as dozens of protesting students at the City College of New York.

“It couldn’t be clearer: These students were brutalised to protect Columbia University and CCNY’s investments in Israeli apartheid,” the group said.

Earlier, we reported many instances of police violence against students. At Columbia, this included hundreds of police with drawn weapons deploying flash-bang grenades.

“It will forever be a stain on Columbia that the administration called riot police on its own student body rather than divest from the brutality of war and occupation,” JVP said

Stefanie Fox, the group’s executive director said, “America is in the business of war-making across the world, and the militarisation of US police forces is a direct result. The US has funded and supported the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians for decades, with private institutions across the country profiting from the same.”

She said that Columbia is on the wrong side of history once again as it was “in its oppression of the student anti-war movement of 1968, and wrong again in its oppression of the student movement against South African apartheid in 1985”.



At least 282 people arrested during Columbia, City College raids: NYPD

The New York Police Department has said that 282 people were arrested following last night’s protests at New York’s Columbia University and the City College of New York.

The numbers were given during a news conference led by New York City mayor Eric Adams.


‘No place for acts of hate in our city’: NYC mayor

“We cannot allow what should be a lawful protest to turn into a violent spectacle that saves and serves no purpose. There’s no place for acts of hate in our city,” New York City mayor Eric Adams said at the news briefing, despite criticism that the police reaction was disproportionate to the student protests. Critics of the protests have tried to paint them as anti-Semitic, although protesters have emphasised that they are focused on ending Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I want to continue to commend the professionalism of the police department and to thank Columbia University. It was a tough decision, we understood that. But with the very clear evidence of their observation and the clear evidence from our intelligence division, that they understood it was time to move and the action had to end and we brought it to a peaceful conclusion,” he said.

Manhattan district attorney will decide whether to charge arrested protesters

The university is still closed. There are police outside the main gate and no one is allowed to go on campus unless you are a student. Everything at this point is pretty calm.

We don’t know how many [people] will be charged … They were arresting people, putting them in buses and taking them to police headquarters.

Just because someone is detained or arrested by the police does not necessarily mean they committed a crime; that will be up to the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

The police will give him reports of what they believe the charges should be, but it’s ultimately up to the Manhattan district attorney to decide if any charges will be brought forward.

Police forced university media out during raid, Columbia student journalist says

Columbia University student journalist Meghnad Bose told Al Jazeera he was inside the university gates when he witnessed the police “arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who had lined up right [in front of] the gates to prevent the NYPD from coming in”.

“I saw firsthand how the police dispersed those protests, arrested them and sometimes got pretty aggressive in making sure the protesters went away,” he said.

Bose said student journalists were present in front of Hamilton Hall to document the event when the police stormed the hall and forcefully moved the journalists out.

“Apart from a couple of journalists who still managed to remain there, most of my classmates, colleagues and fellow student journalists were removed from campus. They were stationed in front of Hamilton Hall because they knew that’s where the police action was going to be, but unfortunately, they couldn’t document or bear witness to any of the important things that happened on campus.”

“We’ve got very little footage of what took place … very easily they could have been stationed at a small or medium distance away from the hall without interfering in the police action taking place.”

Bose also said that the NYPD would have to provide evidence that some of those arrested were not students, as has been claimed by New York authorities.

The New York City Police Department has a long history of violent crackdowns on student protests.

In 1968, Columbia students protesting against the Vietnam War occupied five buildings on campus. A week after the protest started, police officers cracked down on the protesters, forcefully clearing out the students.

More than 700 people were arrested, one of the largest mass detentions in New York City history. The event is now spoken about in a regretful tone on Columbia University’s website even as the administration called in the police again this week.

In 1972, a student blockade of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall ended after police in riot gear stormed the compound to evict students demonstrating against the US military’s bombing campaign in Vietnam.

It is not just student protesters that the NYPD has been accused of mistreating. In 2021, New York’s attorney general sued the NYPD over the rough treatment of protesters against racial injustice in 2020.

Attorney General Letitia James stated that the longstanding pattern of abuse stemmed from inadequate training, supervision and discipline.


New York police display apparent bike lock to condemn Columbia protesters

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard has displayed what appears to be a standard chain for a bike lock to suggest that student protesters at Columbia University are “professional” agitators.

“This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities,” Sheppard told MSNBC, describing the lock as “heavy industrial chains”.

But others were quick to point out that Sheppard was showing a widely used bike lock, which is available for sale on campus.


Amazing how the tactics of the IDF apologists are mirrored in the police crackdowns.
When are they going to bring out the schematic of a Hamas command center under Hamilton Hall ;)