NYPD Leaders Vow to Identify Outsiders Fueling Anti-Israel Protests, ‘Radicalizing Our Students’ Brittany Bernstein
A New York Police Department leader said Friday that officials believe that an outside organization is likely behind the anti-Israel protests that have roiled college campuses and that have led to thousands of arrests around the country, and they intend to “find out who that is.”
“I just want to say, and I said it before, there’s somebody behind this movement,” NYPD deputy commissioner of operations Kaz Daughtry told reporters after police arrested 56 protesters at New York University and The New School on Friday.
“There is some organization behind this movement. The level of organization that we’re seeing in both of these schools and at Columbia,” he said, adding that officers discovered leaflets at the demonstrations that outlined how to protest or how to commit civil disobedience.
The leaflets told protesters what to do if they were to be arrested and what to say to police.
“There is somebody funding this. There is somebody radicalizing our students,” he said, adding that “we will find out who that is.”
At least 300 protesters were arrested at Columbia University and the City College of New York on Tuesday night, including 119 people who barricaded themselves inside the admissions building on Columbia’s campus. New York City mayor Eric Adams similarly said after the Columbia arrests that he believed outside agitators were responsible for the protests’ escalation.
“There is a movement to radicalize young people,” Adams said. “I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
NYPD performed similar sweeps at NYU and The New School on Friday at the requests of the schools’ presidents.
NYPD chief of patrol John Chell read reporters pieces of literature found at the protests that were broken up on Friday. One encouraged students to “occupy the occupiers” while another said, “Long live the intifada.”
“Enter the temporary autonomous zone from New York to Gaza,” another said. “Disrupt. Reclaim. Destroy Zionist business interests everywhere.”
Chell said the pamphlets were indicative of the “mindset of some of these protests for sure.”
He said officers offered NYU protesters several options to “leave peacefully” without arrest but several protesters indicated they wanted to be arrested.
More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested on college campuses across the U.S. in recent weeks, according to a tally from the Associated Press.
President Joe Biden spoke critically of the protests on Thursday, saying demonstrators have a “right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos.”
“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it’s against the law,” Biden said. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation. None of this is a peaceful protest, threatening people, intimidating people.”
“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can’t finish the semester and college education,” he added.
He said the protests have not changed his administration’s position on the Israel-Hamas war.
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