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Pro-Palestine protests: The NYPD released a truly odd video about all the arrests they made. [1]

['Uwa Ede-Osifo']

Date: 2024-05-04 13:00:00+00:00

Police swarmed university campuses this week, arresting more than 2,300 students who were involved in protests over U.S. involvement in Israel’s war in Gaza. But as far as we can tell, only one police unit released a 4-minute-and-30-second cinematic ode to their own heroic efforts.

That would be the New York Police Department, which capitalized on its messy interventions at Columbia University and City College to capture source material for a weird video game–looking sizzle reel that they posted on May 1, one day after the raids.

the NYPD just posted a highly edited propaganda video, complete with an over-the-top dramatic cinematic score, about their raid on Columbia last night



it has to be seen to be believed pic.twitter.com/n1emegDvVY — Matt Binder (@MattBinder) May 1, 2024

Billed as an “inside look” into how the force “restored order” at the two educational institutions, the video opens with a montage of officers gathered in a conference room, watching a video monitor of a protester standing on the rooftop of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall. This on-campus building is where student protestors barricaded themselves last week in an echo of the Columbia students who occupied the same space in protest in 1968. (Those strikes were about racism and the Vietnam War; a later 1985 strike that included an occupation of Hamilton Hall was about getting the school to divest from South Africa over apartheid.)

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A dramatic musical score—like something out of a Marvel movie—plays loudly over clips of officers entering the windows of the garrisoned building, climbing on their laddered megatruck, and breaking the locks to the doors. One officer finds himself standing—dramatically!—in a room with a bunch of sleeping bags on the floor. Other shots show piles of snack wrappers from where protestors were stationed, and piles of chairs that had been used to obstruct doors.

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Toward the end of the video, Chief of Patrol John Chell praises the police force as they stand by rows of empty tents on the quad, saying the sweep was “just a remarkable plan and execution by the NYPD.”

Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard, who is standing beside Chell, delivers an emphatic message to the camera: “This is not a tent city. This is New York City.” He gestures to the former encampment, and adds: “If you’re thinking of doing something like this, take a look around. See how fast we cleared it out.”

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Another official says the tent area is smelly. “No student should have to endure this,” he says, incredibly seriously.

Politically, one can understand why this is an attractive narrative. It obscures the far bleaker reality: President of Columbia University Minouche Shafik called NYPD officials to clear out the protesters from her own (private) campus, maintaining that the intervention of law enforcement at the school was necessary to counter “outside agitators”—alleged bad actors hijacking the movement from the poor students.

That students were under some sort of sinister outside influence remains completely unproven. What has become clear is that the police accidentally discharged a firearm in Hamilton Hall—and they definitely left that out of the video!

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At City College, the same night, police roughed up peaceful protesters—shoved, kettled, chased, and pepper-sprayed them—and then proceeded to pursue stiffer legal penalties for those public-school protesters than their private-school counterparts.

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Between the raids of Columbia and City College of New York, there were approximately 300 arrests, including of professors, community members, and unaffiliated protesters.

That there were other people besides students protesting is real. It’s not unusual for nationalized coverage of a protest to attract more protesters. But police officials and campus leadership have dug in on blaming anonymous third-party actors because it offers them a clear deflection from the material demands of the students.

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The morning after the raids, for example, Sheppard went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to make that argument and brought a prop—a bike lock, multiple of which were reportedly used by protestors to seal Hamilton Hall. Sheppard claimed the lock was a much more serious tool than students could use, one that had been clearly brought in by outside professionals. “This is not what students bring to school,” Sheppard said. “These are heavy industrial chains.”

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The nefarious lock, common among New York City cyclists, is so ubiquitous that it has even been offered at the Columbia University store.

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Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard shows the chains used to secure Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.



"This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities." pic.twitter.com/fwFUPZlIj7 — Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 1, 2024

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, went a step further in a recent press conference, telling reporters that the demonstrations were a “global problem” while warning of some mind-altering conspiracy: “Young people are being influenced by those who are professional at radicalizing our children.”

The release of the NYPD video montage was the cherry on top in terms of PR moves. Because the tragedies of Kent State and Jackson State are not so distant in American history, the police sort of have to make the enemy look far more dangerous than angry crowds of students.

To that point, Adams lamented that a Palestinian flag had been raised by some of the protesters at City College, saying, “It’s despicable that schools would allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.” After protestors were evacuated, NYPD officials filmed themselves raising an American one in some bizarre WWII–style cosplay. Strangely, that one didn’t make the video-montage cut.

They must be saving that energy for their sequels, which include a recent spinoff where the NYPD looks for the mastermind behind stacks of water at the NYU encampment.

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[1] Url: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/nypd-gaza-israel-police-arrests-campus-protest-video.html

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