THE AFFIDAVIT WAS SIGNED BY CASWELL "CAS" HOLLOWAY IV, COLUMBIA’S OPERATIONS CHIEF. HOLLOWAY EVICTED OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTERS FROM ZUCCOTTI PARK IN 2011.

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While it was the NYPD that arrested 45 pro-Palestinian protesters and charged them with tresspassing for occupying Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, it is the school itself that accuses them of being in the hall without permission.

That's according to a review of the criminal complaints filed in all 45 confirmed cases. Those complaints all refer to allegations made in an affidavit by Cas Holloway, Columbia's Chief Operating Officer. It is Holloway who alleges they did not have "permission or authority to be in that building after 12 a.m. on April 30, 2024."

"Hamilton Hall regularly closes to students and the public at 12 a.m. and reopens later in the morning at 6 a.m.," Holloway's affidavit alleges. "No student, employee (other than maintenance and public safety employees) or member of the public" has "permission or authority to be in that building after" midnight.

While the Holloway affidavit was attached to the criminal complaints filed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the cases, it was not included with the complaints provided by clerks at Manhattan Criminal Court in response to a request by The Free Lance. 

They said the public was not ordinarily entitled to review such affidavits and that a special request to a judge, called a "motion," would have to be filed. It would be up to the judge to decide whether to release the affidavit or not.

After The Free Lance submitted a motion, in letter form, a court clerk provided the Holloway affidavit.

What the Holloway affidavit means to the protesters charged with trespassing is if Columbia brought the charges, Columbia can drop the charges. 

It can instruct Holloway to not cooperate further in the prosecution. Conversely, it can also order him to continue to cooperate.

The existence of the affidavit—and its centrality to the charges—shines a spotlight on the man who signed it.

Caswell "Cas" Francis Holloway IV enjoyed a long and varied career as a public servant before he was hired to be Columbia's COO in late Jan. 2024. 

Notably, as mayor Michael Bloomberg's Deputy Mayor of Operations, he spearheaded the City's response to Occupy Wall Street and the first OWS protest camp at Zuccotti Park. 

Like the protest at Columbia, a private university, Zuccotti was actually privately-owned—but required by city law to be kept open to the public. Like at Columbia, the City sent in the NYPD to arrest protesters at the request of a private landowner—in that case, Brookfield Properties.

For successfully riding the Financial District of the pesky protesters, Crain's New York Business named him a rising star the next year.

Holloway's father is a real estate developer in his native Pennsylvania. He graduated Harvard, then went to work for the Park's Department. After temporarily decamping for law school in Chicago, Holloway was back as Bloomberg's "special adviser" —charged with cleaning up the mess left after a fire killed two firefighters at the Deutsche Bank Building in 2007.

He was named chief-of-staff to Edward Skyler, Bloomberg's Deputy Mayor for Operations, for adroitly completing that dirty job. He had Skyler's job by 2011, when Occupy Wall Street came to town.

By his own account, he worked "very closely with the police department and the fire department at the time. From our perspective, public safety was first and foremost what we were focused on."

After sending in the NYPD to evict protesters from Zuccotti, Holloway submitted a sworn affidavit in court opposing protesters' request to a judge to let them re-occupy the park.

In his affidavit, Holloway alleged "Makeshift items that can be used as weapons, such as cardboard tubes with metal pipes inside, had been observed among the occupiers' possessions."

Photos: (1) NYPD arrests Occupy Wall Street protester wearing pro-Palestinian shirt on the Brooklyn Bridge, Oct. 1, 2011; (2) midnight NYPD raid on Zuccotti Park, Nov. 15, 2011. Photo credits: JB Nicholas.

The Free Lance was a news photographer at the time. He was at Zuccotti every day of the protest, from morning until night. The NYPD would not allow protesters to use sticks to hold up protest signs, so they used cardboard tubes, alone.

Holloway also alleged in his OWS affidavit that after the NYPD arrested 732 OWS protesters during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge that "knives, mace and hypodermic needles were observed discarded onto the roadway."

That’s a lie. The Free Lance was also on the bridge during and after the arrests. He did not observe protesters ditching weapons. Nor did he observe weapons of any kind or needles on the roadway afterward, as these photographs of the roadway after the mass arrests show.

Notably, the affidavit Holloway submitted in the Columbia arrests is barebones. It does not contain inflammatory allegations like his OWS affidavit does.

Holloway did not answer his mobile phone when telephoned. Neither did he respond to a voicemail and a text message seeking comment. 

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