Police moved in to clear an encampment at New York University (NYU) on Friday at the request of school officials, a move that follows weeks of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the country that have resulted in nearly 2,200 arrests by police.
Police also intervened Friday to clear an encampment at The New School in Greenwich Village.
Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry posted on
#HAPPENINGNOW: @TheNewSchool has requested our assistance to disperse the illegal encampments inside their university center building and residence hall. As per their request, we are on site and our officers will be assisting with unparalleled professionalism.@NYPDnews… pic.twitter.com/MtYV0BUklM
— NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Operations Kaz Daughtry (@NYPDDaughtry) May 3, 2024
A video posted by Daughtry showed dozens of helmeted officers massing outside the school on lower Fifth Avenue.
Officially, no details about the arrests were immediately released at either New York University or The New School. The students protesting at NYU, however, issued a statement noting that 14 students had been arrested.
“About 14 students were arrested and taken to a prison bus parked on the side of Houston Street. The remaining students carried supplies and demonstrated outside their barricades. We will not stop, we will not rest!”, the students note in a statement from the Palestinian Solidarity Coalition at New York University.
Earlier in the week, more than 100 people were detained during an eviction at Columbia University, where protests and encampments over the war between Israel and Hamas began.
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On Thursday it was learned that during the eviction in Columbia An officer accidentally fired his gun inside Hamilton Hall as he cleared protesters camped inside on Tuesday, authorities said. No one was injured, police said Thursday. The officer was said to have been trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun at the time and instead fired a single bullet that hit a wall frame.
There were other officers but no students in the vicinity, authorities said. Body camera footage shows when the officer’s gun was fired, but the district attorney’s office is conducting a review, a standard practice.
An Associated Press tally recorded at least 56 incidents of arrests at 43 different colleges or universities in the United States since April 18. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
Early on Thursday, officers charged into a crowd of protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, and eventually detained at least 200 protesters after hundreds defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd. Police tore down a fortified camp’s barricade of plywood, pallets, chain-link fences and garbage containers, then tore down canopies and tents.
As at UCLA, camps of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or with companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread to other campuses across the country in a student movement like no other in this century.
Israel has called the protests anti-Semitic, while critics of Israel say it uses such 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 against the war.
President Joe Biden defended on Thursday the right of students to peacefully protestbut denounced the disorder of recent days.
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 that area’s Health Ministry. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on October 7 and took approximately 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
On April 18, the NYPD cleared the initial Columbia camp. Protesters set up new tents and defied threats of suspension, escalating their actions early Tuesday by occupying Hamilton Hall, an administration building that was similarly taken over in 1968 by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
Approximately 20 hours later, agents burst into the room. Video showed police with zip ties and riot shields entering through a second-story window. Police had said protesters inside did not put up substantial resistance.
The officer’s gun went off at 9:38 p.m., the NYPD said, about 10 minutes after police began arriving at Hamilton Hall. The department did not name the officer, whose actions were first reported by news outlet The City on Thursday.
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