Columbia University had a terrible response to the student protests over Gaza, unleashing the police in a heavy-handed crackdown and arresting many people. Now charges against almost all of them have been dropped.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City have had all criminal charges against them dropped, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.
The hearing at the Manhattan criminal courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.
Police arrested 46 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, and cleared a weeks-old tent encampment on a nearby Columbia lawn that has inspired similar pro-Palestinian protests at universities around the world.
All 46 protesters, who were arrested on the night of 30 April about 20 hours after taking over the academic building, were initially charged with trespass in the third degree, a misdemeanor.
Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence. A case against another student was dismissed earlier in the month.
Millan said protesters wore masks and covered surveillance cameras, and there was insufficient evidence to show that any individual defendant damaged property or injured anyone.
No police officers were injured during the arrests, the prosecutor noted.