Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests (2024)

Northeast

The April 18 arrests of 111 demonstrators at Columbia University helped set off a wave of protests across the nation.

The movement spread quickly across the Northeast, as police arrested nearly 1,000 protesters in the region over two weeks, according to The Post tally. Demonstrations sometimes began with just a few dozen protesters at a school of a few thousand undergrads. Many grew as police responded with force.

Some universities, such as Harvard, have mostly avoided police involvement and instead limited who could join protests to those showing student IDs. Columbia also restricted access to campus, but university officials said 13 of 44 people arrested in the April 30 occupation of Hamilton Hall had no ties to Columbia or affiliated universities.

At Emerson College, a small campus in the heart of Boston, protesters set pitched tents in an alley only partly owned by the institution.

The night Boston Police Department officers in riot gear swarmed the alley on both sides, junior Amelia Oei was bracing for something major after the school warned of an “imminent” law enforcement response. Oei left her phone and ID with organizers, ready to be detained with the hope of bringing attention to civilians killed in Gaza.

Suddenly, after 1 a.m. on April 25, police filled the alley.

In a video filmed by a crying friend in a building above, Oei can be seen linking arms with dozens of others to form a “front line” in front of the encampment. The 20-year-old and other protesters heard police might use tear gas, so more than a dozen people held umbrellas over the eyes of those in front.

“Who keeps us safe?” the group chanted as police, walking single file, closed in. “We keep us safe!”

Officers ripped the umbrellas out of hands in the crowd. Then they pulled protesters out of the pack by their limbs or clothing, flinging some to the ground.

“I was not letting go,” Oei said. Then she felt herself torn from the arms she had linked with as she was pushed into a telephone pole, then the ground. Police tied her hands behind her back and arrested her on suspicion of trespassing. She felt the cause was worth it.

Owen Buxton, a 22-year-old senior who was part of the protest, told The Post that several officers pinned him to the ground after he said he heard an officer tell the others he had thrown a punch — an allegation he denies. While he was pinned, an officer pressed a thumb into Buxton’s ear, he said, and black crept to the edge of his vision. His nose bled.

Medical records show he was later treated at an emergency room, where he told providers that police had thrown him to the ground.

Boston police said they did not receive any complaints from Buxton or Oei, and instead referred The Post to an incident report that gave an overall summary of the event. The report did not note Buxton’s injuries, though police say at least four officers were hurt.

“They kept telling me I was being dramatic,” Buxton told The Post, referring to the officers. “I thought I was going to die.”

South

In the South, some state and local officials have made clear they won’t stand for encampments. Through May 2, authorities arrested more than 300 protesters and used tactics including deploying chemical irritants.

At the University of Texas at Austin, 136 arrests were made across two protests, the most of any campus outside New York and California. Students there were met by state troopers in riot gear and on horseback who were called in by Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

“These protesters belong in jail,” he wrote on X.

According to videos shared on social media, police at UT-Austin wrestled down a cameraman for a local news station, repeatedly punched a protester as demonstrators blocked a police car’s movement and used chemical irritants to clear the crowd.

Abbott’s aggressive response drew widespread criticism, including from some Republicans who had supported his earlier efforts to back free speech on campuses.

At an encampment at Emory University, where Georgia state troopers used pepper balls in an April 25 crowd dispersal with 28 arrests, video showed a protester being hit with a stun gun while pinned to the ground with a handcuff on. Observers can be heard screaming at police to stop.

Georgia state police said in a statement that only one hand was cuffed, and the protester had shoved the other under his body. After troopers tried twice to use a stun gun on the demonstrator’s right shoulder, they stunned him in the abdomen and then the right quad for five seconds each.

At the University of South Florida, where more than a dozen were arrested across protests on April 29 and 30, police used tear gas to disperse what they called “unsanctioned” demonstration after protesters refused to leave by a 5 p.m. deadline.

Gas-filled videos show students dropping their signs and running away from a quad as police in riot gear and on bikes close in on the encampment.

“Please do not resist arrest or … injury could occur,” police can be heard telling protesters in video from the scene.

Some students in the region and across the country say they feel protected by police, who they say are limiting how far encampments can spread and ensuring security.

Lilly Fox, a freshman at Tulane University in New Orleans, said she has been feeling unsafe as a Jewish student. When police at the private school arrested 14 people on Wednesday — after they had arrested six protesters days earlier — she was relieved.

“I’m grateful that the police were able to clear the encampment,” Fox said. “This really gave me peace of mind.”

West

More than 500 arrests took place at demonstrations on at least 10 campuses in the West, as tensions rise between increasingly aggressive protesters and police.

At least one school in the University of California system, the University of California at Berkeley, said it would allow encampments to continue. But after an outbreak of violence among protesters and counterprotesters, UCLA brought in police, who leveled tents of demonstrators early Thursday morning.

In a pre-dawn raid, police officers threw stun grenades at protesters who were quickly trying to erect new barricades.

“Get down,” officers yelled. “Get back!”

They also used at least one fire extinguisher to clear the crowd and arrested more than 200 people. But even as the crowd thinned, protesters said they’d be back.

“You can’t stop us!” they yelled.

At California State Polytechnic University at Humboldt in Arcata Calif., students on April 22 took over one campus hall, then a second. The Popular University 4 Gaza Telegram channel called them “the cutting edge of the movement.”

They barricaded buildings with furniture and damaged lawns and other property that could cost the university millions of dollars, according to a school spokesperson.

At 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, after the administration shut down campus, police stormed the buildings and arrested 32 people on charges including unlawful assembly, vandalism, conspiracy and assault of police officers.

“What was occurring was not free expression or a protest,” the school, which remains shuttered until May 10, wrote in a statement. “It was criminal activity, and there were serious concerns it would spread even further on campus.”

At Arizona State University, campus police came under sharp criticism after a video surfaced apparently showing them removing the hijab of a protester. Police removed hijabs of at least four women, according to attorney Zayed Al-Sayyed, who is representing them and described the move as a violation of religious freedom.

He noted that the women use the scarves to cover their heads in “a religious symbol of modesty, privacy, and piety.”

“Every one of the four women let the officers know we cannot take off our hijab, you cannot take off our hijab, they explained the significance,” he said. “To some of them, they said it’s for your safety, to others they said it’s for the safety of others.”

The women did not receive new hijabs for 17 hours, Al-Sayyed said, until their attorneys brought them to jail.

The university said it is looking into the matter.

Midwest

In the Midwest, some universities have begun reaching agreements with demonstrators. At Northwestern University, students and administrators agreed to remove tents and the university agreed to answer questions about its endowment holdings. The University of Minnesota followed with an initial agreement Thursday.

Those truces came as more than 200 arrests were made throughout the region, The Post tally shows.

Some officers in the Midwest have also used force.

At Washington University in St. Louis, where campus, city and county officers cleared an encampment, footage shows police beating a professor, then dragging him across campus. Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University, said in a statement he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of” several officers. He was hospitalized with broken ribs and a broken hand, he said.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and St. Louis County Police Department each referred questions to school police, who did not respond to a request for comment.

At Indiana University, state troopers have repeatedly tried to clear the encampment. Videos show they’ve come in riot gear, some armed with paintball guns able to fire paint and pepper balls.

Sophom*ore Sydney Glickman was among those observing a demonstration on April 27 as police forced their way into a group of protesters and threw them to the ground, at least one by the neck.

She said she had felt safe until the state troopers showed up, their actions leaving her in tears. It felt to her like they were saying the pro-Palestinian demonstrators didn’t have a right to speak their minds, she said.

“I have never felt more helpless in my entire life,” she said.

Back at Columbia, tensions reached a tipping point Tuesday night. Journalists and observers were cleared as officers in riot gear massed on the east and west side of campus. More than 100 police used a tactical ladder and a sledgehammer to enter Hamilton Hall, which dozens of protesters had occupied. They arrested more than 100 demonstrators, bringing the total at Columbia to more than 200.

The next day, Popular University 4 Gaza sent a message signaling organizers’ belief that the movement couldn’t be quashed.

“ONE CAMP GOES DOWN,” it read. “TWO MORE SPRING UP.”