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CNN International: Police Poised to Clear Out UCLA Pro- Palestinian Encampment; Law Enforcement Seen Entering UCLA Encampment. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired May 02, 2024 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:30:00]

GRAEME BLAIR, UCLA ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR: We felt that students needed, that we could come here and help demand that our administration not respond in ways that those other campuses -- that those other campuses had, and that's what we've been trying to do.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: It hasn't worked though, has it? Because you're now seeing these lines of police who are now going to go in and clear what you say is a legitimate protest, and they should be allowed to stay.

BLAIR: That's right, and the reason that they are going in is that they're using the pretext of a set of violent attacks that took place last night on this campus. I was here from 11 p.m. until 4 o'clock in the morning when a set of racist, sexist, anti-Palestinian activists, who aren't students, came to our campus and violently attacked them.

They weren't exercising their right to free expression or free speech, they were violently attacking using bear spray and pepper spray, and harming our students, many of whom went to the hospital.

And so, that pretext to me is simply wrong. These students have been here, peacefully, talking about the genocide in Palestine, and they were not responsible for the violence last night.

And in fact, I was here and saw myself that these students are exercising extraordinary restraint, and when they're provoked by these right-wing activists, they don't respond. They turn the other cheek, and they -- and in my view, they've done nothing wrong, and so I think that that pretext shouldn't have been used here.

And two nights in a row, the University of California and its leadership, political leadership in California, have decided not to protect those rights, and so that's why we thought that we needed to be here, to ensure that those rights are protected.

FOSTER: Can I just challenge your pretext there because I was reporting yesterday as this was happening, but the way I saw it was the university decided that this encampment shouldn't continue, and they asked the police to come in, then you had the counter-protesters saying, we want to be part of this process to clear the camp. So it was actually the university that triggered the counter-protests, not the police and the violence. BLAIR: Let me be clear. The violence has been taking place over the last five days. Last night was an escalation of the tactics of these activists, but this violence and the vile vitriol that they've been sharing has been going on since the first day of the protest without any action by the university.

And so last night, after those attacks began, I watched it happening, there were people that came in in white masks, and the university did call the police after that, and they sent in the University of California Police Department briefly, they then retreated, and then retreated for four hours.

FOSTER: Graeme, we're going to have to leave it there. Stay safe. We're going to come back to you a bit later on. You're watching Breaking News.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

FOSTER: We are watching fraught scenes at the University of California campus at Los Angeles. There's an encampment there, pro-Palestinian supporters. The police are present, and we're expecting them to go in and clear that encampment.

Nick Watt is live at the scene for us -- Nick.

NICK WATT, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, so we heard a flashbang about 10 minutes ago, so that perhaps was to kind of startle the people inside. We've seen an increased LAPD presence here. I'm now amongst the pro-Palestinian protesters who have gathered to show solidarity for the people in the encampment, which is just over there.

So we've got LAPD, we've got California Highway Patrol, we've got sheriffs, and we've got a lot of people shouting at them whenever they come out of these buildings, shame on you, shame on you, and the world is watching.

So this is about the time that we expected that this might happen tonight, and it appears that it is perhaps already underway, or just about to be.

Now, I'm also hearing from our reporters on the other side of the encampment, where there is another large group of pro-Palestinian protesters like the one I'm with here now.

I've just heard that a fight has broken out there, a scuffle, unclear exactly who it's between, but clearly emotions are very high as this operation appears to be getting underway -- Max.

FOSTER: I've just been speaking to a professor supporting the students, and he's making it very clear they have a right to protest, they're not going to move, if they want to move them they're going to have to be arrested, so that's going to be a mass arrest, basically, is what he's saying.

[04:35:00] WATT: Correct. I mean, listen, you know, the last time I looked over that wall there were, I would say, hundreds of people still in there. I don't know how many left when that dispersal order was given.

Yes, listen, I mean, there are professors who say this is legitimate, but frankly, camping and blocking the campus is not allowed, and I've also heard from other protesters -- from other professors, who think that this is disgraceful. Obviously, a huge range of opinion, strong emotions on every side. And listen, I mean, you can hear the people chanting, you know, people are not happy.

I mean, we're being -- sorry Max, yes, go ahead.

FOSTER: Just take us through the process, we're seeing police, we're assuming a LAPD lined up there, and then what will happen is the highway patrol that will go in and clear whilst the police hold order, is that correct?

WATT: That is what I was told by a source earlier, was that the LAPD, which you can see, they are facing these protesters with me, this is not the encampment. The California Highway Patrol has been facing the encampment itself, and the reason for that is this is a state university, so after the campus police, the next agency that gets brought in is the California Highway Patrol, another state agency. And the governor, who essentially is their boss, he made it very clear earlier today that he wanted a robust presence here.

So we are told California Highway Patrol will be the ones that go in, but that is unclear, but we have seen them with riot helmets, with gas masks hanging off their belts, and we have seen, I mean, you can see here, LAPD with this, what looks like a rifle, it's actually a non- lethal weapon. So that would fire either a beanbag or something at protesters should that ever become necessary. And a lot of these officers also with zip ties, flexible handcuffs on their belts as well, prepared to make arrests.

I mean, right now, you know, Max, we are being held back, this crowd is being held back just by a kind of flimsy barrier that I've got to say has been rattling a little in the past few minutes, but they're just chanting peaceful protest, so that is what these people are planning on right now, what is going on inside the camp, whether they will be resisting arrest, unclear.

I would think that they wouldn't, there is going to be a fairly heavy, I wouldn't say overwhelming, but a heavy force from the California Highway Patrol and whoever else is going in there. I would imagine what we saw at USC, another college here in Los Angeles, what we saw there last week was that the protesters who were told to disperse and who didn't sat in a circle, they linked arms and they waited to be arrested, and they gave themselves up peacefully, shouting free Palestine as they went, making their point.

So we'll see how this shakes down, Max, but it looks like finally at about 1:30 in the morning, after many, many hours of build-up, that finally this is now happening -- Max. FOSTER: OK, let's just remind people what they're seeing, for those tuning in, you're seeing lines of police on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, preparing to go in to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment there on the campus, caused a huge amount of disruption, and yesterday at this time we saw some violence as counter-protesters moved in, they don't appear to be there tonight, but as Nick was describing, lots of supporters of the pro-Palestinian group there, gathering around the scene, so a lot of people involved.

A very tense moment, this, for the police, as they consider how to go in and clear hundreds of people who were in there.

I was speaking to a professor just a short while ago who's very much part of the support group, and he says they don't plan to go anywhere, they have a right to be there, so therefore what that suggests is you're about to see a mass protest, and we have been seeing reports of police buses being brought in, which you would think is what they would use to take those arrested away.

Nick, you wonder though whether or not this will calm the undercurrent here that we've got a theme popping up on campuses across America, which is the huge injustice as many people see it, of what's going on in Gaza.

This is one moment, and it's a very visual moment, but it's not necessarily going to calm down the wider movement here.

[04:40:00]

WATT: No, I mean, police action rarely does, and we saw in Columbia University in New York last night, we saw police entering a building that pro-Palestinian protesters had taken over, we saw them entering and arresting about 300 people there.

So it doesn't tend to calm the emotion, but what it does do is it clears out university buildings, it clears campuses, it gets the visual impediment, it clears that away, but it does not quell the emotion, as you say. I mean, people here, a lot of people here are very passionate, very moved by what is happening in Gaza, and feel moved to stand out here in the middle of the night, and feel moved to be --

Oh, oh, oh, we've got LAPD on the move, unclear where they're going. So you see, Max, the phalanx of LAPD, you can see the light reflecting off the visors on their helmets. Every time they move, this is the reaction.

Listen. Yes. We've also seen earlier, Max, as California Highway Patrol were on the move, they, I mean, they, strangely, I don't know quite why they made this decision, they walked through this crowd that I'm now in, and they had water bottles thrown on you, and this chant, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you.

These officers have been standing here for hours, moving in and out, facing these taunts, facing this passion, and as you say, it doesn't really solve anything, it doesn't really quell any of the passion, but what it does do is open the campus.

I mean, your professor you spoke to earlier was saying that they do have a right. I mean, under university law, they don't have a right to be doing this, and that's what the university has finally decided that they've had enough of.

For a long time, they let this happen, the university. They didn't want to inflame. They kept law enforcement really far back. They didn't want conflict, and then what happened last night, as you say, with those pro-Israel counter-protesters really hammering at that barricade, that is what changed a lot of minds. That's what changed, perhaps, the mayor's mind, the governor's mind, and eventually the university administration's mind.

And today, we saw a very different day than we've seen the past six or seven days. We saw so many law enforcement, and now, we're seeing this -- Max.

FOSTER: Just to explain how the jurisdiction works here, because as I understand it, the University of California has its own police force. A lot of criticism being made of LAPD acting late here, but actually, it wasn't their decision, was it? They have to be invited in by the university, so actually, more of the criticism now is being pointed at the university as just acting too late.

WATT: Well, so, the university police force is not particularly big, maybe, I don't know, under a hundred officers, so they just do not have the capacity to deal with this. And I've spoken to people at other UC schools around California who say, sure, we see that these protests, you know, Berkeley in Northern California, they've had pro- Palestinian protesters blocking a gate to the campus for weeks, and the university administration told me, well, we just can't do anything about it. We just don't have the resources, and when we ask for outside help, we're told by other police departments, it's going to take a while.

So the jurisdiction here, Max, is campus security is in charge, next is the California Highway Patrol, because this is a state university, this is state land, California Highway Patrol is a state organization.

The LAPD also has to be invited in, so the LAPD has been in the wings for the past week, waiting, but they have to be invited in, and it appears that it has been college administrators who were very loath to ask them in, and there was some suggestion that perhaps it was Mayor Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, who finally, you know, prevailed upon college officials to call in the LAPD.

So much criticism last night, you know, from the protesters inside, who said that basically, for quite some time, they were under attack by these counter-protesters, and they were not getting any protection from the campus security, or from the police, while they were being attacked.

You know, the college also hired an outside security company to do a lot of the work over the past week. It's all about optics, it's all about how people see this. They don't want UCLA, does not want to have pictures shown all around the country of their employees engaged in scuffles with their students.

That is just a bad look, and they tried desperately to avoid it, and frankly, in the end, it didn't work. And we've ended up with what happened last night, and now we're seeing what's happening tonight. They tried to be hands-off, didn't really work -- Max.

FOSTER: You and I have covered many of these protests. I mean, what do you make of the strategy here?

[04:45:00]

Normally, you'd see, if they're concerned, you'd see the police going in very quickly, almost shock tactics, as part of the whole strategy for these sorts of events. But we've seen them just standing off for hours now, which arguably is intimidating. Maybe that's part of the plan, or is it strategy that they just want to make sure they've got it right?

It can't be really helping this increase in tensions of them just sort of facing off each other over this very long period of time.

WATT: Well, I mean, tonight, I think they've really tried to wait until the middle of the night, hoping that all these people would have gone home. They haven't. Some of them have, but a lot of them are still here.

Also, Max, a lot of lessons were learned from what we saw at USC last week. So I was there last week. There was a small encampment, and the campus police went in there, ripping down tents, getting involved in scuffles with students. I mean, it looked terrible.

And they eventually, actually at USC, they arrested one of the protesters, dragged that protester to a car. The car was surrounded by pro-Palestinian protesters demanding, let him go, let him go.

And eventually, the LAPD, that has a little more experience in this kind of thing than campus police, the LAPD made the decision, listen, let's just let this guy go. The juice is not worth the squeeze. We're keeping this guy in custody for a very minor offense, and it is inflaming the crowd.

So what they have really tried to do here, and perhaps they've taken too much of a lesson from what happened at USC, they tried this extremely hands-off approach here. They allowed those protesters against campus policy to have this encampment. They allowed those protesters to control who was coming in and out.

They kept the LAPD well out of sight. They had this hired security company that was here being really the sort of front line. And as I say, it worked for a little bit, but it didn't work in the end.

And you know, you've also, what you've ended up with here, Max, is you've had for the past week Jewish students on campus feeling very intimidated, very threatened. You've then also had these pro- Palestinian protesters feeling very threatened by those pro-Israel protesters last night, now by this. So basically, you've got, everybody is annoyed. Everybody feels unsafe. Everybody feels they've been failed.

FOSTER: You also feel as if there's a bit of a mutiny beginning amongst the staff as well. When you've got professors out there joining a campaign that's been condemned by their boss in the name of a student protest, that's a pretty extraordinary situation, isn't it? Because, you know, I think people take two views on this.

Students have a bigger right to protest. The professors should actually be getting on with their jobs and staying out of it.

WATT: No, I mean, we have seen a lot of, we've seen marches. There's a big banner that we've seen around the past few days of faculty in support of the pro-Palestinian protesters. And as I said, I've also spoken to other professors who think that this is absolutely outrageous, that this is allowed to happen in the place where they work.

I mean, I saw a really interesting little argument this morning. So there was this group of pro-Palestinian faculty were standing actually right where I am now, giving a press conference in solidarity with the pro-Palestinian protesters. Some pro-Israeli people started heckling them.

Then there was a little breakaway where there was one professor who is sympathetic with the protesters and there was a Jewish student. And this Jewish student was saying, I'm not being allowed to go where I want to go. And this professor, you know, it's the only time in the past couple of weeks where I've almost seen at all the campuses I've been to, USC here, they were almost trying to find common ground. Because what we've really seen here is basically the two sides shouting past each other, shouting at each other, not even trying to find common ground.

This was almost a nice moment, but they didn't quite find any common ground, but they did shake hands. But yes, listen, it's, it's, it's divided communities. You know, this college is a community and this issue has divided this community and many other college communities across this country -- Max.

FOSTER: Let's take people through what they're seeing. We're seeing police surrounding an encampment at UCLA, an encampment of pro- Palestinian supporters. The police are planning, or they've been directed to go in and clear this encampment.

And it's pretty clear that the pro-Palestinian protesters don't plan to go anywhere. So the solution could potentially be a mass arrest. The tensions are so incredibly high there.

[04:50:00]

And we saw this really kick off last night with, you know, a very limited amount of violence between the protesters and some counter protesters as well. But this has really escalated to the point where we're seeing a standoff police surrounding the encampment for, you know, hours now and not actually going in. So it's a real moment of tension there. And we just don't know how it's going to look when eventually they do go in. These are images, of course, the university didn't want to see.

There's a huge amount of disruption to all students who aren't involved in any of this. They want to allow them to get back to their learning. They also accept that protesters have a right to free speech.

And they also know that they can't control it, which is why they've had to bring in the LAPD. So a huge amount of pressure on those police with cameras surrounding them and on how they're going to handle it.

Also pressure on the protesters to get their message across without a huge amount of distraction coming from any sort of disruption that comes out of this. But they're very determined.

And this is a microcosm, really, of what we're seeing across the United States at campuses. Lots of pro-Palestinian supporters not liking what's going on in Gaza, how it's being handled, how their country's handling that and their involvement there, and specifically how their universities are also linked to what's happening in the Middle East.

Nick, we should point out that this hasn't been the story all along at UCLA. Actually, for a very long time, very measured traditional protests, if you like, going on at the campus there, whilst there were more scenes of drama at other campuses. But somehow, we've got to the point where UCLA seems to be the real friction point and where the, you know, front lines of this seem to be being expressed overnight there.

WATT: Well, you know, Max, it started around the country. I mean, Columbia in New York was really the first campus protest that really kicked all this off. And that was probably, I want to say, nearly two weeks ago now.

That was, again, the NYPD kept back. And then finally, yesterday, they moved in. And we've seen it dotted around.

I mean, we saw in Wisconsin this morning, the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Again, police went in quite heavy-handed to break up an encampment. Four officers were actually injured. They arrested dozens of students. And then what was really strange there was once all that was over, the police came out and said, all right, we're really glad that the protesters are still here exercising their First Amendment right. Just no tents. So carry on with the protest, just no tents.

And it was very strange to have that juxtaposition of, yes, you're welcome, when just a couple of hours earlier, we had seen these law enforcement officers basically wrestling with students, trying to grab them out of these tents.

L.A. has become definitely an issue. You know, USC last week was really where it was concentrated. But you see, here's the difference. USC is a private university. So what USC did was they cleared out the encampment. It didn't look great. It didn't go that well. But they then got everybody off the campus. They then closed the gates. They closed it down.

So hang on, this barrier is, I think, this barrier being moved.

So and then a lot of the -- a few of the people that I saw over at USC in that protest, I've now seen over here. So they moved it from the private university where they were excluded to this, which is a state university, which is an open campus. They can't close the gates.

So that's why UCLA has become the focal point here in Los Angeles for this protest. And it is a lot of students, but it is also bringing people from the wider community who either feel passionately or frankly just want to come for a fight -- Max.

FOSTER: OK, Nick Watt there on the scene. Thank you. We're going to keep coming back to you.

You can see there a flurry of activity around a group of police officers or highway patrol moving between the crowds. What you're seeing there is a lot of supporters of the encampment. It does feel as if they're going to move any second actually into the encampment.

There are some reports that they're already in. They're starting to clear. But this is a pretty measured scene here.

Lots of supporters allowing the police to do their job. But when it comes to actually removing the tents and the barriers, that's where we're expecting a lot of the concern to be, because this is a protest which the university allowed to happen. It got to the point where they couldn't allow it to happen any longer. They called in the police.

You can see them really gathering their forces, if you like. Nick, it does look as though the police are trying to build up a critical mass in order to get through the barrier there.

[04:55:00]

I'm not sure how clearly you can see that, but a big cluster of police by a barrier ready to go in. So this feels like a turning point.

WATT: So, Max, what I'm hearing from Conor Powell, one of our reporters who is over the other side, he's saying police are now leaving the encampment and protesters are throwing things and yelling at them. Police are fleeing the area. Despite the water bottles being thrown at them, police are not firing those non-lethal weapons. They're not firing those bean bag rounds.

Protesters here and over there are loudly cheering because a lot of people here are watching live streams of what is going on inside and on the other side. So that's why you hear these cheers.

So right now, Max, they are cheering the fact that it seems like the police have sort of pulled back a little bit.

FOSTER: OK. Nick, thank you. You're there at the UCLA. We're not leaving this story. Stay with us because Kasie is going to continue after this short break.