Columbia protests stay: Students conflict at UCLA over pro-Palestine protests hours after NYPD arrest dozens | EUROtoday

Police officers are “responding immediately” to a request from UCLA chancellor Gene Block for assist on campus, the place violence has damaged out between pro-Palestine protesters and counter-demonstrators.

Violent clashes have erupted on the University of California campus in Los Angeles between pro-Palestinian protesters and a gaggle of counter-demonstrators, footage run by US broadcasters confirmed.

Read the total assertion, launched by Columbia University through a spokesperson, after NYPD officers entered its campus to have interaction with the demonstrators:

A bit after 9 p.m. this night, the NYPD arrived on campus on the University’s request. This choice was made to revive security and order to our group.

We remorse that protesters have chosen to escalate the scenario via their actions. After the University discovered in a single day that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we had been left with no alternative.

Columbia public security personnel had been compelled out of the constructing, and a member of our amenities staff was threatened. We won’t danger the security of our group or the potential for additional escalation.

The management staff, together with the Board of Trustees, met all through the evening and into the early morning, consulting with safety consultants and legislation enforcement to find out the very best plan to guard our college students and your complete Columbia group. We made the choice, early within the morning, that this was a legislation enforcement matter, and that the NYPD had been finest positioned to find out and execute an acceptable response.

We consider that the group that broke into and occupied the constructing is led by people who will not be affiliated with the University. Sadly, this harmful choice adopted greater than per week of what had been productive discussions with representatives of the West Lawn encampment.

We severely curtailed the variety of folks on Morningside campus beginning Tuesday morning. Over the course of the day, we up to date our group on entry to campus buildings, and can proceed to take action via the following few days.

The choice to achieve out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the trigger they’re championing. We have made it clear that the lifetime of campus can’t be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the foundations and the legislation.

Early Tuesday, protesters selected to escalate to an alarming and untenable scenario – together with by vandalizing property, breaking doorways and home windows, blockading entrances, and forcing our amenities and public security employees out – and we’re responding appropriately as we now have lengthy made clear we might. The security of our group, particularly our college students, stays our prime precedence.

College college students taking over area and making calls for for change. University directors going through strain to get issues again underneath management. Police introduced in to make arrests. At different faculties: college students taking be aware, and typically taking motion.

The pro-Palestinian demonstration and subsequent arrests at Columbia which have set off related protests at campuses nationwide as of late and even internationally aren’t new floor for college students on the Ivy League college. They’re the newest in a Columbia custom that dates again greater than 5 many years — one which additionally helped present inspiration for the anti-apartheid protest of the Nineteen Eighties, the Iraq struggle protests, and extra.

“There are straight-out calls for the genocide of Jews,” mentioned legal professional Jay Edelson on NewsNation’s On Balance.

Read extra from Michelle Del Rey:

“The president believes that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach,” John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman, mentioned on Tuesday.

His feedback come lower than per week after the Biden administration signed a invoice to ship $26.4 billion to Israel to assist its ongoing struggle in Gaza, which has killed greater than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them ladies and kids. Over 100 Columbia college students had been arrested two weeks in the past throughout peaceable protests on the campus.

The NYPD has denied that officers used tear gasoline on demonstrators at Columbia Univeisty, saying that false stories had been ciculated on-line.

Officers could use flashbang grenades “to deflect or surprise” protesters, CNN reported.

Live footage from the scene confirmed a number of officers coming into the higher storeys of Hamilton Hall constructing on campus, utilizing a SWAT ramp on prime of a big truck.

CNN famous how the NYPD officers had been solely carrying helmets, no full tactical gear.