Students Mark Somber Anniversary With a Film, UCPD Responds in Force
On the first anniversary of the attack on the Palestine Solidarity Encampment at UCLA, a planned screening of the documentary The Encampments, which contains footage from the UCLA encampment, was raided by armed UCPD officers in riot gear.
This is a very different reaction from the absence of UCPD and the UCLA administration during the mob violence directed at the students and faculty inside and outside the camp, and journalists who were there to record the events, which they could barely believe were actually happening.
The screening was originally scheduled for 7:00 p.m. in Royce Quad, the encampment’s location, and the scene of the disturbing attack. However, for reasons that UCLA has yet to comment on, a student was arrested in the early afternoon and released after an hour. However, UCPD then announced, via social media, that while there was no danger to the campus community, Royce Quad would be closed to all until the morning of May 1.
Student organizers went ahead with the screening at the bottom of Janss Steps, but UCPD arrived. They then moved the screening twice more, and at approximately 8:24 p.m., around 30 officers from the UCLA Police Department, dressed in riot gear and some equipped with less-than-lethal weapons, assembled in Bruin Plaza behind the McClure Stage. Nearby, pro-Palestine demonstrators were gathered to watch a documentary being shown on a screen positioned beside the Bruin Bear statue. Earlier, a UCPD officer had directed the protesters to take down the screen.
At 8:45 p.m., approximately 200 pro-Palestine demonstrators began marching down Bruin Walk in the direction of the Hill. At 9:00 p.m., approximately 30 UCPD officers in riot gear rushed into a crowd of pro-Palestine protesters, accompanied by three officers on motorcycles who entered the area shortly after. By 9:05 p.m., officers had detained one demonstrator near the exit of De Neve Plaza. During the incident, a UCPD officer also confiscated equipment used by protesters to screen a film. Two student protesters who were holding the screen were seen being arrested in video footage from the scene, from the account Poppy Press. According to this source, the students who were arrested were loaded into a “BruinCar” van, which is normally used to take students to their housing.
In a later post, Poppy Press stated that one of the arrested students was still at UCPD in custody and a second had been released and taken to the emergency room.
In a video posted on Instagram stories, UCPD officers were seen brandishing batons and pointing the “less than lethal” rifles in the direction of the students. One student was heard saying, “What are you doing?”
The last official communication from Chancellor Frenk was entitled, “Reflection, action and our path forward,” on April 28, which seemed to take stock of the violence last April. In it, Frenk said, “Since last spring, UCLA has taken meaningful steps to ensure we can both maintain our commitment to free expression and make our campus a place where all Bruins feel safe, welcome, supported, and able to thrive. In my first few months, my leadership team and I have had open and honest conversations with faculty and staff from all groups and persuasions about the issues they face. We welcomed Steve Lurie, an experienced public safety leader, to head our new Office of Campus and Community Safety and improve the ways in which we support Bruins, and I am appreciative of this team’s hard work. And we’ve opened up new channels for those with different perspectives to process those differences through respectful discussion and debate.”
As of 3:27 a.m., UCLA and Chancellor Julio Frenk have not commented on the use of police force on campus and how to reconcile it with his previous statement.
