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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Police tactics at campus protests reveal disparities in approaches to | |
public order and lessons learned post-George Floyd | |
By Emma Tucker, CNN | |
Updated: | |
2:31 PM EDT, Sun May 5, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
As universities and colleges turn to police to clear their campuses of | |
protests over Israel’s assault on Gaza that continue to ripple across | |
the nation, the response by law enforcement is under heightened | |
scrutiny after thousands were arrested since mid-April. | |
Footage captured from the physical - and - confrontations between | |
police and protesters reveals a gamut of tactics used to disperse | |
demonstrators from occupied school buildings and take down on-campus | |
encampments. | |
Civil rights groups have criticized what they say is an excessive | |
police response to the protests as officers, clad in riot gear, swarm | |
campuses and in some cases have deployed rubber bullets, chemical | |
irritants and pepper balls to quell them. Law enforcement agencies say | |
they were challenged with ensuring the First Amendment rights of | |
protesters while enforcing the law and the rules of the universities | |
and keeping everyone safe. | |
The wide range of police tactics seen on campuses nationwide reveal the | |
disparities between police agencies in their training and understanding | |
of the generally accepted best practices in dealing with protests and | |
crowd control issues, law enforcement experts told CNN. | |
Still, the experts said, police were largely measured in their | |
approach and showed restraint in using force – a direct result of | |
lessons learned during the widespread protests after the police killing | |
of George Floyd nearly four years ago. Those protests than prior | |
demonstrations. | |
“In the rearview mirror of every police executive is the summer of | |
2020, which was a real defining moment for police in terms of handling | |
demonstrations, violent demonstrations,” said Chuck Wexler, executive | |
director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement | |
policy group. “Police were not prepared for the level of violence | |
they encountered.” | |
A ‘balancing act’ for police on campus | |
Officers have arrested more than 2,000 people on US campuses since | |
mid-April amid polarized debates over the right to protest, the limits | |
of free speech and accusations of antisemitism. Although the demands | |
among protesters vary at each university, the majority of | |
demonstrations have called for colleges to from companies that | |
support Israel and the . | |
The large crackdowns on protesters have led to clashes and , and some | |
counter-protesters, unfolding on campuses that have in some instances | |
prompted canceled or modified graduation ceremonies and increased | |
security protocols. | |
At Columbia University, officials asked the New York Police Department | |
to maintain its presence on campus until May 17 after officers carrying | |
heavy-duty bolt cutters and zip-tie restraints deployed flash-bang | |
grenades to breach a building that was occupied by protesters. At the | |
University of Arizona, officials said as a last resort to disperse | |
protesters. And in California, at UCLA, officers fired rubber bullets | |
and took control of the encampment site nearly three hours after they | |
were called in by campus officials. | |
The current war began on October 7 when Hamas militants killed more | |
than 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 200 people | |
hostage. Israel’s military response has since sparked a humanitarian | |
catastrophe in Gaza that has inflamed opinion globally, as its health | |
ministry says more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed. | |
President Joe Biden on Thursday, drawing a line between what he called | |
peaceful and violent protests, repeating his support for Israel, and | |
dismissing calls for the National Guard to intervene at universities. | |
It’s rare for universities and colleges to call in local police onto | |
their campuses, experts say, but the dynamic varies depending on | |
whether they are private or public. The institutions that have their | |
own police departments, most of them public, typically have a | |
memorandum of understanding or mutual aid agreement that dictates when | |
they request assistance from police agencies. Other private schools | |
only have private security personnel, like Columbia, which does not | |
have the training and resources to deal with certain incidents. | |
“You have a balancing act here between universities wanting the | |
police to come on board and then you have police decision makers who | |
are having to determine what response is appropriate,” Wexler said. | |
One of was a greater sensibility around the need for dialogue and | |
engagement with protesters, said Frank Straub, senior director of | |
violence prevention at Safe and Sound Schools, an adolescent-targeted | |
violence prevention project, and founder of the Center for Targeted | |
Violence Prevention at the Police Foundation, an organization that | |
studies ways to improve US policing. | |
“I think we also saw this different sensibility about how to clear | |
protests,” Straub said of the police response to campus | |
demonstrations. “While you may bring in a lot of police officers, I | |
think we saw less aggression directed at the protesters.” | |
Police approaches to protests evolve | |
The Police Executive Research Forum about lessons learned from 2020, | |
highlighting the need to evolve police approaches to demonstrations. | |
Among its recommendations, PERF advised police departments to avoid the | |
use of mass arrests, to warn crowds before deploying less-lethal force | |
and to ensure an effective line of communication throughout the | |
policing chain of command. | |
“That summer was more about demonstrators protesting against the | |
police,” Wexler told CNN. “What we’re seeing now is universities | |
asking the police to intervene, so the police are not the object of the | |
demonstrators. However, it doesn’t take much for a particular event | |
to get out of control and then the police do become the focus of the | |
demonstration.” | |
The majority of the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations were | |
peaceful, but there was a small number of protesters who were | |
responsible for “significant pushback and violence,” Wexler said, | |
and police departments were not prepared for how they escalated. In | |
some cases, officers couldn’t distinguish lawful protesters from | |
those who were being disruptive or causing violence, he added. | |
New York City to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the | |
city’s police department of using unlawful tactics against protesters | |
during the summer of 2020. The NYPD came under during those | |
demonstrations. An investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia | |
James found that officers allegedly used “indiscriminate, | |
unjustified, and repeated use of batons, pepper spray, bicycles and a | |
crowd control tactic known as ‘kettling’ against peaceful | |
protestors,” she said. | |
Two months after the settlement was reached in 2022, James and civil | |
liberties groups that “significantly reforms” the department’s | |
policing of protests to protect “the public and members of the press | |
from excessive use of force,” according to a news release. | |
The agreement mandated the NYPD to “change how it deploys officers to | |
public demonstrations,” to better allow the public to exercise their | |
First Amendment rights. | |
The NYPD was put to the test last week, when officers at Columbia | |
University and City College after NYPD officers cleared encampments and | |
the Hampton Hall campus building that was occupied by pro-Palestinian | |
protesters. | |
New York Mayor Eric Adams said no excessive police force was used while | |
clearing the building. “Anyone that understands clear police | |
responses and tactics and maneuvers to prevent dangers to protesters | |
and other individuals, it is about sending a clear message that we are | |
not going to allow disruptive and disorderly behavior,” he said. | |
Of the nearly four dozen people arrested, 13 were adults not affiliated | |
with Columbia and six were students affiliated with other educational | |
institutions, according to a from the university. | |
“A significant portion of those who broke the law and occupied | |
Hamilton Hall were outsiders,” a Columbia spokesperson said. | |
In , NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said among the | |
items recovered were “tools of agitators” – hammers, knives, | |
helmets, goggles and tape, among other items. | |
These so-called outside agitators “often amp up the level of emotion | |
and the level of aggression that they’re using to get more publicity, | |
to get more media attention and public attention,” Straub said. | |
“As they ramp up with the intent of getting a response, that’s | |
where things start to become potentially dangerous,” he said. | |
Sometimes, ‘aggression is really the safer way to go’ | |
The first move for law enforcement agencies responding to universities | |
is to establish the campus rules governing behavior and determine what | |
activities are protected by constitutional rights, said Spencer Fomby, | |
who designed the National Tactical Officers Association public order | |
command class on decision making and how to apply police tactics. | |
The standard best practice in policing is to make it clear to | |
protesters that if they are violating the rules they are outside the | |
bounds of their protected free speech, Fomby said. | |
While universities and colleges , they didn’t always establish clear | |
ground rules with protesters, which in some cases allowed the | |
demonstrations to spin out of control, Straub said. | |
“With any protest, it’s really important there’s a meeting of the | |
minds in terms of the guidelines that everybody is going to be expected | |
to follow,” he said. “And I don’t think that happened in several | |
places across the country.” | |
On some campuses, there was a deliberate effort to stop the encampments | |
before they became established, Fomby said, but on others, like | |
Columbia’s, a delayed police enforcement allowed the encampment to | |
become more entrenched and protesters took over a building. | |
“But once that happens, it’s going to require a large number of | |
officers. They’re going to have to have a really defined plan on how | |
they’re going to come in, in a systematic way,” Fomby added. | |
At the University of Arizona, school officials said police in riot gear | |
took “significant measures” – deploying pepper balls and rubber | |
bullets – after protesters engaged in “dangerous actions” while | |
officers tried dispersing them. | |
“Arizona did a good job of giving people space to protest and to be | |
seen and heard, both on the campus and in the media but also by each | |
other,” said Straub. “The problem became that then the two sides | |
started to grab each other, so now the police have to step in to keep | |
people from getting injured or killed or significant property damage | |
from occurring.” | |
At Columbia, police faced some criticism for using a military-grade | |
truck equipped with a ladder to access the second-floor window to enter | |
Hamilton Hall. But while the operation looked aggressive, Straub said, | |
it was safer for both the protesters and police. | |
“So sometimes what looks like an overuse of power, or aggression is | |
really the safer way to go,” Straub said. | |
While the NYPD’s approach was methodical in how they surrounded the | |
building and largely measured in how they engaged with protesters, the | |
confrontation between protesters and police at UCLA was “a lot more | |
chaotic and a much more violent confrontation,” Fomby said. | |
Officers were seen breaking down plywood barriers outside the | |
entrenched encampment where protesters had barricaded themselves | |
inside, as flash-bang explosives exploded overhead. | |
“What happened on the UCLA campus did not happen overnight,” Fomby | |
said. The First Amendment protects people’s right to free speech, to | |
redress the government of their grievances and “to say things that | |
are inflammatory and disrespectful,” he said. | |
“They don’t have a right to incite violence, to set up encampments | |
and then to use violence to promote their political ideology,” he | |
continued. “When people cross those lines, that has to get stopped, | |
and typically the way we restore order is by having the police come in | |
and stop that criminal activity.” | |
CNN’s Julia Jones, Maria Sole Campinoti and Artemis Moshtaghian | |
contributed to this report. | |
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