Hundreds of cops storm into UCLA campus, detain dozens of pro-Palestine protesters

Hundreds of cops, with shields and batons, have entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to disperse a pro-Palestinian protest camp that was attacked by pro-Israeli supporters less than 24 hours ago.

The helmeted police officers worked to remove barriers, wood panels among other objects that served as barriers into the camp, reported the Los Angeles Times. The officers muscled their way into the campus in the pre-dawn hours around 3.15 am PDT (3.45 pm IST) to arrest occupants who refused to leave.

California Highway Patrol officers detained dozens of protesters who were trying to reinforce the barricade while cops in protective gear attempted to break it. Officials initially tore down the barricades outside the UCLA encampment.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol’s special operations unit were spotted in police riot gear with helmets, gas masks, zip ties. Before entering the campus, they were seen getting their batons ready. Some protesters were seen kneeling down, their arms zip-tied behind their backs while being arrested.

Protesters fight back

“When it started around sunset on Wednesday, around 300 to 500 police officers were seen inside the camp while around 2,000 more gathered outside the barricades when the officers in tactical gear first began filing onto the UCLA campus,” Reuters reported quoting a local television.

As per media reports, police used flash-bang tupe devices that echoed across the campus. A few protesters fought back while shouting, “push them back”, and flashing bright lights in the eyes of the police. Some of them had been seen donning hard hats, goggles and respirator masks in anticipation of the siege a day after the university declared the encampment unlawful.

In repeated loudspeaker announcements, police asked demonstrators to clear the protest zone before moving in.

Surprise attack

Earlier, a group of masked counter-demonstrators kicked off a surprise attack on the tent city leading to a violent clash between the encampment's occupants. The occupants of the outdoor protest camp, set up last week, had remained otherwise peaceful before the clash, in which both sides traded blows and doused each other with pepper spray.

The confrontation continued for two or three hours into early Wednesday morning before police restored order. A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom later flayed the “limited and delayed campus law enforcement response” to the unrest as “unacceptable”.

After the clashes, the university said the campus, which enrolls nearly 52,000 students, including undergraduates and graduate scholars, would remain shut except for limited operations on Thursday and Friday.

Police action

The police action in UCLA came a day after police in New York City arrested pro-Palestinian activists who occupied a building at Columbia University and removed a tent city from the campus of the Ivy League school.

The clashes at UCLA and in New York were part of the biggest outpouring of US student activism since the anti-racism rallies and marches of 2020.

Students have rallied or set up tent encampments at dozens of schools across the US in recent days, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support Israel's government. Many of the schools have called in police to quell the protests.