Police crack down on encampment at UCLA protests; live protest updates

UCLA, Columbia protests see violence, more arrests

College campuses across the country are bringing in police as pro-Palestine protesters remain at encampments.

LOS ANGELES − Police in riot gear swept onto the UCLA campus Thursday and began tearing down makeshift barricades around a pro-Palestinian protest encampment that had drawn hundreds of protesters and was attacked by pro-Israeli counterprotesters earlier this week.

The predawn crackdown at UCLA marked the latest flashpoint for protests scattered across US colleges amid mounting anger over Israel’s war in Gaza and growing impatience on the part of school administrators to allow disruptions they say make their campuses unsafe.

Hours before the move to dismantle the encampment, officers in tactical gear began filing onto the campus as protesters chanted “We’re not leaving!” and “Who do you protect?” and “Where were you last night?”

Some demonstrators, many carrying makeshift shields and umbrellas, tried to block the advancing phalanx of law enforcement while shouting, “push them back” and flashing lights bright at the officers. But others surrendered without incident and were ushered away by police.

Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the Daily Bruin in a text message that protesting professors planned to be arrested alongside students.

“We are doing this to call attention to the unjust and criminalizing UC decision to call in the police,” he said. “We will support our students until they are released, and then we will be back with them to re-center attention on divestment.”

About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and more than 200 taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The Israeli retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and obliterated much of the enclave’s infrastructure. The humanitarian crisis has fueled outrage on some US campuses and spurred demands for an end to investment in Israeli companies and amnesty for student protesters.

Columbia faculty, students protest: Campus protests intensify

UCLA canceled Wednesday classes after counterdemonstrators battering a makeshift barricade around the enampment. Chancellor Gene Block, who blamed the violence on a “group of instigators,” said the student conduct process has been initiated and could lead to disciplinary action including suspension or expulsion.

Hundreds of US college students arrested this week while protesting the war in Gaza face criminal charges amid encampments, building takeovers and civil unrest. But how those charges play out remains a key question. On Tuesday night, New York police arrested nearly 300 people at Columbia University and the City College of New York. A day earlier, clashes with protesters at the University of Texas in Austin resulted in 79 arrests. Tulane University said 14 protesters were arrested at an “illegal encampment” on the New Orleans campus.

And officers made at least 70 arrests late last week and over the weekend at Arizona State University. But scores of cases at other universities have already been dropped.

Richard Serafini, a South Florida criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, explained that with hundreds of arrests at a mass protest, prosecutors still “have to be able to have the evidence” against each individual.

“You can’t blame someone who just happened to be there,” he said.

− Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Asher Stockler

Campus protests across the US: Hundreds were arrested. But will the charges stick?

Contributing: Reuters