NYPD Columbia raid criticized harshly by progressives
The New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) sweeping operation at Columbia University late Tuesday was met with fierce criticism from many progressive lawmakers, who pushed officials to deescalate the situation.
Hundreds of police officers stormed a campus building Tuesday, as they sought to regain control of a Columbia University building that had been seized by pro-Palestinian protestors more than 20 hours earlier.
“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and univ presidents,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media platform X, responding to Mayor Eric Adams’s (D) warning ahead of the police raid for students to vacate the building “before the situation escalates.”
“Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety. A nightmare in the making,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “I urge the Mayor to reverse course.”
The New York Democrat later reposted a CNN report of the NYPD operation, which quoted a reporter saying, "I've covered lots of this sort of stuff around the world, and I've never seen this many police moving into one area."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) reposted a statement from journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was responding to the same footage.
“If this were in Russia or Iran — a police force of this size deployed against students protesting the state's war policies — it'd be universally denounced as evil tyranny,” Greenwald's post, shared by Omar, reads.
“The problem for the protesters is they chose the one issue that could provoke police force of this kind,” he added.
The criticism comes as demonstrations against the war in Gaza have spread across campuses in recent weeks. On Columbia’s campus, protestors escalated the situation by seizing control of the Columbia building, Hamilton Hall, smashing windows and unfurling an intifada banner in the process.
The move prompted Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, to send a letter to senior NYPD officials Tuesday, requesting that police remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also issued his harshest criticism yet of the protests Tuesday.
“Smashing windows with hammers and taking over a university building is not free speech," he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. "It is lawlessness. And those who did it should promptly face the consequences that are not merely a slap on the wrist.”
“Campuses cannot be places of learning and argument and discussion when protests veer into criminality and those who commit such acts are doing nothing to convince others that their cause is just,” he added.