Several dozen NYPD officers cleared a demonstration of about as many pro-Palestinian student demonstrators from Brooklyn College Thursday evening before making a series of violent arrests and tasing one demonstrator just outside the campus.
A group of about four dozen students had gathered hours earlier on a campus lawn, waving Palestinian flags and setting up several tents with a list of five demands, including having the college boycott and divest from companies that profit from Israel’s war in Gaza, dubbing the quad a “Liberated Zone.”
Dozens of NYPD officers entered the gated campus to oust the demonstrators shortly before 6 p.m., with students leaving campus without incident, funneled out of the campus gates onto Bedford Avenue.
But a tense situation quickly devolved on the streets around the school, as officers started making a series of violent arrests.
Several people were detained right outside the campus gates, while the remaining group of protesters tried to disperse, headed to the nearest subway station on Flatbush Avenue. The group paused for a minute on the sidewalk outside Tanger Hillel, a club house for Jewish students, with one protester speaking to the crowd, when all hell broke loose. NYPD officers started pushing their way into the crowd, punching and kicking students and slamming them to the ground.
In one instance, an officer used a Taser. A video of the incident captured by FreedomNews.tv showed the officer tasing the protester while he wailed in pain.
Two eyewitnesses, who asked not to be named, said they watched the officer use the Taser on the demonstrator.
A reporter for THE CITY on the scene heard the zapping sound characteristic of the weapon from several feet away from where the protester was being taken down to the ground by several officers. An NYPD spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment about the use of a Taser on a demonstrator.
Another young woman’s face was bloody and swollen after she was tackled to the ground by an officer, while THE CITY watched as several other demonstrators were slammed to the ground and pinned down under multiple officers.
A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed 14 people were taken into custody, seven arrested and seven issued summonses. The spokesperson said they were called just before 5 p.m. for “occupying and tresing on school grounds” and those arrested outside“did not comply with verbal warnings by the NYPD to disperse were taken into custody.”
Richard Pietras, a spokesperson for Brooklyn College, defended the college’s involvement of police citing the tents the students set up on the quad. “After multiple warnings to take the tents down and disperse, of CUNY Public Safety and NYPD removed the tents and dispersed the crowd,” he said. “The safety of our campus community will always be paramount, and Brooklyn College respects the right to protest while also adhering to strict rules meant to ensure the safe operation of our University and prohibit individuals from impeding access to educational facilities.”
But James Davis, the President Professional Staff Congress, the union representing CUNY faculty, pointed out students were negotiating with college leadership and had dismantled tents when the NYPD finally entered campus. In a statement he slammed CUNY Chancellor Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson for involving the NYPD.
“Their non-violent protest did not block access to campus buildings or otherwise interfere with the college’s educational processes or facilities, as prohibited by university regulations on the maintenance of public order,” he said. “CUNY campuses should be spaces in which students who are not infringing on the rights of other of the campus community may exercise their constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech and assembly.”
Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who last year brought a gun to a pro-Palestinian campus protest, tweeted a video of the mayhem claiming the group was “attacking Hillel” house. A reporter on scene witnessed no attempt to enter the building or any type of vandalism before the NYPD started making arrests on the sidewalk.
The Brooklyn College protest, coming just before finals, followed dozens of arrests the night before inside and outside Columbia University after pro-Palestinian demonstrators, many of them masked, flooded and attempted to occupy a campus library. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed 78 people were given desk appearance tickets for criminal tresing and another two received summonses.Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday criticized the Columbia protesters, saying in a TV interview that the “behavior is unacceptable.”
Unlike at the Columbia demonstration, the Brooklyn College students made no attempt to enter a building but gathered on an outdoor lawn where around three dozen protesters remained for hours, chanting “Palestine will live forever” and waving Palestinian flags.
A row of sympathetic faculty stood watch throughout most of the afternoon as dozens of NYPD officers stood by on Ocean Avenue.
Classics professor Liv Yarrow described the protest as “incredibly peaceful and in no way disruptive,” adding, “the faculty are extra disturbed by the presence of armed police and the zip ties.”
Additional reporting by Katie Honan.
