POLICE RAM PROTESTERS WITH MOTORCYCLES IN TEXAS, 43 ARRESTED
"ANY NORMAL HUMAN, ANYBODY WITH A MORAL COMPASS KNOWS THAT THIS IS WRONG."
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This is a developing report. Check back for additional news.
Texas State Police drove motorcycles into peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin on Monday. At least 43 were also arrested.
The clash came the day after Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) charged Israel was committing "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians.
It was the second time in six days Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent police to arrest students at Texas's flagship college for peacefully protesting in favor of Palestinians. 57 were arrested last Wednesday, but county prosecutor Delia Garza dropped charges against all but one.
The one exception was a television news cameraman. Carlos Sanchez, 43, is charged with felony assault on police. Sanchez was viciously thrown to the ground and arrested by Texas State Troopers because he allegedly bumped into one of the officers with his camera, video showed.
Shortly after noon on Monday, protesters set up about a half-dozen tents on the South Mall Lawn. The protesters were mostly students sprinkled with an array of non-students, including a few middle-aged white men and gray-haired women. One young man wore a New York Yankees' baseball cap, suggesting geographical diversity.
School officials responded almost immediately.
School police sent what they called a "dispersal order" via email to all students. The order threatened them with arrest for disorderly conduct if they were "participating in the South Mall event" and did not "disperse."
More than 100 Texas State Troopers and officers from the Austin Police Department and University of Texas police with riot gear arrived around 1:30 pm. A few carried assault rifles. Most carried oversize riot sticks.
Protesters made makeshift barricades out of folding tables and wood and placed them around the tents. Around two dozen locked arms and stood or sat in a circle around the tents. Some held umbrellas to defend themselves from police pepper spray.
News of police on campus, again, brought more students to the scene. The crowd around the protesters swelled. As the riot police approached, a drum beat like two armies were about to clash on an 18th Century battlefield. Spectators began to yell a mix of pleas and abuse at the police.
"These are students! Students! We're students! We're peaceful!," spectators yelled, "Shame on you! They're peaceful!"
The riot police went to work, grabbing protesters one-by-one, pulling, twisting, dragging them away from the circle to be handcuffed and led away to a black maria.
Meanwhile, spectators chanted in unison: "Let them go! Let them go!"
Police cleared the camp by 4:00 pm. But un-arrested protesters regrouped and blocked a Travis County Sheriff's Department van, with arrested protesters inside, from leaving. Police pushed against the students, but the students appear to have caught the police by surprise.
Until this moment, police had only used their hands and numbers against protesters. They carried weapons but did not use them. But in this moment the police were outnumbered and outmaneuvered—and the protesters pressed their advantage.
The two forces literally lined up and pushed against one another. Man-on-man, bracing and pushing the man in front of them as if in a rugby scrum. At one point, an Austin Police Department officer began punching a student-hammer style—likely to dislodge his grip on something.
"Hands off our students! Hands off our students!," protesters chanted between curses.
Police, for their part, yelled "Move back!" and "Back up you're gonna get hurt."
Police broke the deadlock by hosing down the crowd with pepperspray and detonating two flash-bang grenades.
State Police drove motorcycles into the crowd of stunned protesters, both the college newspaper, The Daily Texan, and the local CBS affiliate, KWTX 10, reported.
"No encampments will be allowed," Gov. Abbott said on X, formerly Twitter. "Instead, arrests are being made."
But student Shan Panjwani, 20, said "Any normal human, anybody with a moral compass knows that this is wrong."
“The way that they’re responding to the people who protest for this cause specifically is completely different from the way they usually respond to protests," the business sophomore added. “You do not need to bring out people with ARs and riot shields against kids who are unarmed just sitting on the campus."
Also on Monday, 500 University of Texas at Austin professors published an open letter of no confidence in school president Jay Hartzell because he “has violated our trust."
A separate open letter by more than 160 faculty specifically condemned what they called “the aggressive and disruptive police presence that your office invited onto our campus on April 24, 2024.”
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