Here’s how much it cost LA police to break up campus Gaza protests

EXCLUSIVE: The University of California Los Angeles spent a fortune on police and security in response to a campus Palestine solidarity encampment, Josh Marcus reports

Police advance on pro-Palestinian demonstrators in an encampment on the UCLA campus, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The University of California Los Angeles campus police department and the Los Angeles Police Department spent more than $630,000 in overtime costs this spring breaking up protests and a campus Palestine solidarity encampment, according to public records obtained by The Independent.

Between April 25 and May 25, the campus police force spent $389,389 on overtime, while the LAPD paid out an estimated $243,444 in overtime between April 30 and May 7 – periods that corresponded with the most intense protest activity.

In that time, over 200 student protesters and counter-demonstrators were arrested at UCLA.

The overtime figures add to the whopping $10m overall UCLA reportedly spent on safety and security during the protests between March and June, according to a university estimate.

Students and faculty have now questioned whether the millions spent on extra security actually made them safer.

“I was there early on from the very beginning,” UCLA political science professor Michael Chwe told The Independent. “I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact it was very peaceful. It was not aggressive in any way.”

Dr Nir Hoftman, a professor at the Geffen School of Medicine and a member of UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, disagreed that it was entirely peaceful. He said he saw worrying signs from the beginning over law enforcement’s posture around the protests, even before the encampment, and that when he needed help from police they didn’t give it.

Starting on April 25, student groups erected a protest encampment at the public university comprised of about 30 tents, calling on UC officials to divest from companies tied to the Israeli military, part of a wave of protests nationwide on campus since October 7 over the Israel-Hamas war and larger issues around the Israel-Palestine conflict.

On the night of April 30 and into the morning, the encampment came under attack, as pro-Israel counter-protesters beat the assembled students with blunt objects and shot fireworks into the encampment. Fights broke out and chemical irritant gas was sprayed from both sides, as a small contingent of campus police and security largely stood by and watched.

“This is one of the most antisemitic and anti-Jewish attacks on our students in a long time,” Chwe said. “A large function of the students who were attacked were Jewish. It was very, very harsh.”

It took more than three hours for campus police, the LAPD, and the California Highway Patrol to regain control, at which point many of the attackers were gone. An estimated 150 students were hit with pepper spray and bear mace. At least 25 protesters were taken to the hospital, and volunteer medics had to transport some of the wounded because city ambulances weren’t near the protest site, according to Chwe.

UCLA spent millions responding to pro-Palestine protests on campus (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The Independent has contacted UCLA and the UCLA police for comment for this story. The LAPD responded to questions by directing The Independent to the UCLA campus police.

By May 2, after the encampment was declared an unlawful assembly, police moved in and arrested more than 200 people, largely pro-Palestine student activists, from the protest camp. During the clear-out, police used riot weapons like flashbangs, rubber bullets, and tear gas, which civil rights advocates argued violated state use-of-force laws.

Political science major Tajvir Dhesi, 21, of Texas, took part in some of the encampment protests, to stand against what he called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and show his support for divestment and Palestinian statehood.

He said it was “dystopian” to watch the police show of force, with riot police arresting activists as helicopters buzzed overhead, a day after law enforcement failed to stop what could’ve been lethal violence against those same students.

“They didn’t protect the protesters when there was clear violence happening,” he said. “The police did nothing and then the next day the same people who had been viciously attacked were now subject to a police raid in which the entire encampment was destroyed and some of those protesters were injured by the cops. That’s just a very odd ordering of priorities.”

Campus police and security officials largely stood by as a large group of counter-protesters attacked the Palestine solidarity encampment on April 30 (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Hoftman, the professor, said he watched in the months after October 7 as campus protesters disrupted events and erected a pig statue holding a bag of money outside a March UC Board of Regents meeting, a gesture many found antisemitic, all with seemingly little interruption by police.

When Hoftman went to personally inspect the encampment, he said a group of men in keffiyeh scarves, a symbol of Palestinian resistance, physically accosted him as campus security stood by and watched.

“Why should these thugs be able to muscle me out of the campus?” he told The Independent.

Campus security told him to visit campus police if he had complaints, and when he visited the campus police department, Hoftman said an officer told him it was “bullsh**” but campus officials told them not to intervene in the encampment.

During a subsequent visit to the encampment, Hoftman said he was tackled and had an earbud stolen, again without any police interruption or investigation. He also said he saw worrying, violent exchanges during a pro-Israel event on April 28, where pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel supporters fought each other when a barrier separating the groups was breached.

“I’m thinking ‘this is going to end in an absolute disaster’, and the rest is history,” he added.

During the height of the encampment, there were nearly 600 LAPD officers on campus, according to the school’s Daily Bruin paper. That matched scenes on other elite university campuses like Columbia, where hundreds of NYPD officers cleared a campus encampment and occupied building.

It would be nearly another month, with the May 24 arrest of 18-year-old Edan On, before anyone who attacked the UCLA encampment was taken into custody. (In June, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to charge him, citing insufficient evidence.)

Throughout May, protests continued. A group of 44 protesters were arrested in a parking garage where they had assembled ahead of a planned sit-in. Police said they had bolt cutters, super glue, and padlocks. At the end of May, another group of about 70 protesters, who had been pushed out of a subsequent encampment by police, occupied UCLA’s Dodd Hall and were quickly dispersed by riot patrols.

Chwe argues that campus pro-Palestine activists were the main victims of violence over the last semester, both at the hands of counter-protesters and the police.

“There are very few, if any, other people who experienced violence who were not protesters calling for divestment,” he said. “It’s still hard to get your mind around that this kind of thing could happen in the United States and at a university campus, where we’re supposed to talk about settling things through dialogue. It really feels very disturbing.”

Dhesi graduated from UCLA this spring, and said his experiences on campus will stay on his mind as he enters law school after a gap year. He’s not against spending money on policing, and has considered being a prosecutor, but said he felt city and state resources could’ve been better spent.

“If you’re going to spend the money, you should’ve spent it that night during the attack on the encampment,” he said. “That was genuinely the most sickening day I’ve ever been at UCLA.”

Hoftman said that since May, police on campus seemed to have taken a more proactive approach to shutting down unpermitted encampments before they form, but still hadn’t figured out how to protect “minority communities” on campus.

“They’re just reacting,” he said. “They’re not coming in and trying to prevent things.”