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Violent Clashes Between Rival Protest Groups at UCLA; Police Clear Protestors from Columbia University. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 01, 2024 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[06:00:47]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Six a.m. here on the East Coast. Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. I'm Kasie Hunt. We have breaking news right now.

Violence on the UCLA campus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

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HUNT: A crowd of pro-Israeli demonstrators clashing with members of a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus after school officials declared the encampment illegal. In video from the scene, you can see protesters throwing a wooden pallet, fireworks, parking cones, a scooter.

These clashes have been ongoing for hours. There had been minimal police intervention, but we are told that the LAPD is now on scene. That from tweets from the LAPD and from the L.A. mayor's office.

Joining me now is Donell Harvin. He is with Georgetown University's Emergency and Disaster Management Department. Donell, good morning to you.

How would you assess the response here? We know that there's been some reluctance on the part of these universities to call police for fear of escalating the situation.

But the violence that we're seeing at UCLA does seem unique and an escalation from -- even from the taker of the building at Columbia.

DONELL HARVIN, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY'S EMERGENCY AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT: Yes, Kasie, this is a failure of planning on part of the university public safety officials and administration, especially when you have this amount of people. You may have competing or warring factions. To not have a real physical police presence or barriers between these groups is really unconscionable.

This is something that we've done in many of the cities I've worked in. You have to be able to protect people's First Amendment rights to protest. You also have to be able to protect them from counter- protests.

And to let this devolve into the anarchy that the viewers are seeing on their screen right now is something that, hopefully, will never happen again and we won't see.

The LAPD and the surrounding jurisdictions -- I'm sure they'll be calling what we call a mutual aid -- are very good and adept at civil disorder. But they're coming in kind of late and behind the eightball, so to speak, on this.

This is unbelievable, to see students on student violence in an American city in this time and age.

HUNT: So, Donell, when we learned about what Columbia had -- had done, so they sent police in to clear out Hamilton Hall last night. And they put out a statement that said that they thought that there were outside agitators. It was not just students.

How do you determine that in this kind of a situation? And what impact does that have in a situation like this?

HARVIN: It has a tremendous impact. And, you know, I study and analyze homeland security issues and domestic threats.

And so I don't look at these particular demonstrations, which started off as perfectly fine, peaceful First Amendment protected activities, in isolation.

You will recall for the last five or six months, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has been wanting the American public about outside agitation in our domestic politics, particularly as it pertains to the Israeli-Hamas conflict. He has said, in no uncertain terms, as well as the the intelligence community, that they are seeing the highest level of external threats to our domestic security since 9/11.

And so what you see is a lot of foreign terrorist organizations and other agitators stoking violence here in the United States, stoking radicalization.

Now I want to be very clear. I'm not saying that these students are radicalized. But on the spectrum of radicalization, you may have a lone actor who is out there, who's becoming radicalized online. And it's really easy to track these things online with social media and with some of the tools that law enforcement has.

HUNT: Yes. Donell, stand by for me, because I want to bring in our Stephanie Elam. She is on scene at UCLA as this violence is continuing.

Stephanie, I know you've been trying to get into place here, but bring us up to speed on what you've seen so far and what we know about the state of play with the police having -- the LAPD recently, just within the last hour or two, saying that they were coming to the scene.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And as you can see, I'm going to step out of the shot, Kasie. So you can see the police officers are here now. They are in their riot gear.

What we have seen over the last few hours is the situation devolve. I was out here all day yesterday. And I can tell you that you saw little, you know, flare-ups that were quickly quelled from people who were from both sides of this encampment here.

[06:05:15]

ELAM: Overnight, this completely devolved. And what we've seen now is that the plywood that was being used in there, that was being tossed around. We saw the barricades that were loaded in and brought out yesterday afternoon. We see that they were being used overnight, as well.

We did see that the -- UCLA came out last night, saying that this was now unlawful. And then, as things devolved, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, coming out saying that they were asking for help from LAPD in the situation we've seen.

Now that there has been a mobilization here around here, there's a strong police presence on this side of campus where we are. You can still share chanting going on. There have been skirmishes that have continued throughout the night here on the campus of UCLA.

And the presence now being felt. There's not a lot of movement here. I've seen a lot of videos of the police officers standing in place.

But obviously, what we've seen are basically agitators on both sides here who have started up skirmishes. We then see also people on both sides trying to stop it, trying to quell these little skirmishes that become bigger as they're trying to break down the tents on the inside of the pro-Palestinian side.

So still, when you take a look at it, right now, you can hear through here. You can hear the chanting. You can hear that there's still a lot of activity, despite the fact that it's just after 3 a.m. in the morning here at UCLA -- Kasie.

HUNT: Stephanie, you said you've been covering this for the past few days. Can you kind of describe to us -- one of the things our law enforcement experts and Donell has been telling us is that there's no -- there hasn't been an appropriate barrier between these two groups.

Aan you just explain to us where these groups were in relation to each other? And what kind of barriers there might have been. Were those barriers taken down?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Skirmishes.

ELAM: Yes. No, there -- there have been barricades that were up. There were barricades that were separating everybody. And we have seen them being broken down. We have seen them being thrown. We have seen all of that.

But there -- what UCLA actually did is separate both sides with a, like, a walking path. And they had barricades up on both sides and then barricades reinforced on either side of that. That is what we saw.

We've now seen those barricades being broken down.

HUNT: How far apart were the two groups?

ELAM: What happened versus what happened overnight are two different. There were probably about I would say probably about maybe ten feet of heart but what we've seen, what I saw yesterday, and those little flares of tension is nothing compared to what we've seen overnight here tonight.

It has been much more aggressive. We've seen much more anger. We've seen a lot more of that compared to what we saw yesterday, when there were just smaller little yelling at each other. And that was it.

What happened yesterday versus what has happened overnight, completely different.

HUNT: Stephanie, can you just give us a little bit more insight? We've been describing these as pro-Palestinian protesters and counter protesters.

How do you understand what people are advocating for in each of these groups, and how, how they're presenting themselves, especially actually the counter protesters.

ELAM: A lot of it has to do with when you -- when you come down here, a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's been so separated. Like this front area here where I am, this has been the part where you see pro-Israeli demonstrators who've been out here. They're out here with their flags. They're out there showing their support.

And then across the double barrier behind that where you see those -- those plywood walls and such, that is where the pro-Palestinian side, the encampment that has been here.

So when you were out here, you can see it's actually clearly delineated -- I think more so than perhaps on other campuses -- here at UCLA. That's how they've been able to hold this.

And we did see people from other sides encounter the other side and there would be -- again, there'd be some yelling, there'd be some shouting. There was some tension, but they'd walk away.

That was most of what we saw during the day here yesterday. But it's very clearly delineated when you get further onto this campus and into this green -- Kasie?

HUNT: Yes. Stephanie, what's your understanding of the next move for the police officers. Obviously, we can see in your shot -- and you guys have been doing a wonderful job showing us == that they are sort of there in a line.

Clearly, they're going to have to involve themselves at some point. What is your understanding of how this is going to unfold, going forward? ELAM: From what I can tell, this is not the only line of law enforcement here. There is also another line that is pushing from the other sides and just moving the crowd in different directions.

So you have this line here, I think probably to stop more people from going in if they don't want them to go that way.

[06:10:03]

And then you have also lines of law enforcement on the inside that is moving around.

So there are multiple lines here.

I have to tell you, getting onto campus, there's a massive police presence. There were police cruisers everywhere there. There are police officers walking out towards the perimeter of the campus as well as here now, on the campus.

All of this very different than what we've seen here over the last few hours.

HUNT: Yes, and yesterday, there was no police presence? Or what was the security presence like when you were covering this before?

ELAM: There were local security that was here on campus, and there were some UCLA police officers that he did see walking on campus. And I saw some that were in cruisers, watching to see what was going on in certain places on campus, at different places on campus. And they were watching.

And then I saw them also after things seemed to calm down, they moved away and did two different things.

So no, we've seen police officers, but not in the numbers that we're seeing right now. Definitely not compared to yesterday to today.

HUNT: All right. Stephanie Elam, standby for me. Thank you very much for this great reporting. And I know you're going to be gathering throughout the morning as this continues to be an unfolding situation.

Donell Harvin, you are still with us. I just want to kind of get your reaction to what Stephanie was describing in terms of the reporting of how these two groups were separated, this kind of ten-foot space, barriers that are being, you know, deconstructed, potentially thrown.

How does that -- what is your understanding of how -- whether that setup would be effective? Clearly, it didn't prevent this. Maybe it couldn't have, but you're the expert.

HARVIN: Yes. So I want to pull on a thread that Stephanie said. While there may have been barriers, the barriers clearly weren't sufficient. I mean, we had barriers in D.C. to protect the Capitol on January 6, and the protesters picked them up and threw them at law enforcement.

And so these barriers have to be reinforced with a physical law enforcement presence to let people know that they can demonstrate peacefully. They can voice their concerns, but they're not going to commit what we call interpersonal violence.

And so there will obviously be some after-action report on how those barriers were set up.

I have to be honest with you, college campuses are not used to dealing with this type of issue. But they better get used to it. The longer that this Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes on, as the FBI and the intelligence community has warned us, the more you will see this type of level of discourse and, in some cases, violence.

We didn't see violence in Columbia university. It was civil disobedience. Those students were arrested and displaced without incident, by and large.

Here, I think the -- the energy is different. And I think you're going to see a different type of unfold -- law enforcement action unfold as this operation starts taking place.

And a lot of that's because they didn't have the proper security posture in place at the outset to really set a tone that this will not devolve into the lawlessness that we're seeing right now.

HUNT: All right. Donell Harm and for us. Donell, thank you very much for that.

Coming up here, police clear Columbia University's campus of protesters, making dozens of arrests. We're live on that campus, too.

Plus a new CNN poll on abortion rights. Are advocates still as passionate as ever, two years after the fall of Roe versus Wade?

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[06:17:40]

HUNT: Breaking news. Violent clashes engulfing the campus of UCLA at this hour. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups attacking each other after school officials -- officials declared an encampment illegal and increased security on campus.

Protesters hurling all kinds of objects. A wooden pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter. To this point, there's been little police intervention, although the police are on scene now. The chancellor of UCLA asked them for assistance. And we have been seeing them lining up on either side of this.

Meanwhile, in New York, Columbia University's campus was cleared overnight.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They got in. They got in. The officers have opened the window. They have gotten in now. Officers have opened the window. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Dozens of New York City police officers entering the occupied Hamilton Hall through a second-floor window last night.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have shields.

(HAMMER BANGING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police!

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HUNT: Hundreds of officers were able to clear the building and ultimately the entire campus, arresting dozens of protesters. They restored order in less than two hours.

The penalty that's facing those who've been taken into custody is severe, especially those who breached Hamilton Hall.

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EDWARD CABAN, NYPD COMMISSIONER: They'll be charged with burglary in the third degree, criminal mischief, and trespassing. For the individuals that are in the encampments outside, they'll be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

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HUNT: And there are lingering questions this morning about the protesters. Were they students or outside agitators?

Columbia University has asked the NYPD to maintain its presence on school grounds until May 17, two days after commencement ceremonies.

CNN's Gabe Cohen is live from Columbia University with the latest.

Gabe, good morning to you. All quiet there at this hour?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kasie, a quiet morning here at Columbia after that chaotic night, where you can see behind me here this is a closed-off campus still this morning.

And over my other shoulder, you might be able to see those NYPD officers still huddled, gathered outside the campus where they are you're going to remain, as you mentioned, until May 17, two days after graduation, at the request of Columbia.

Those officers are standing in front of Hamilton Hall, that building that was occupied for about 24 hours. And from this viewpoint, we could see that dramatic operation pulled off by -- (AUDIO GAP)

[06:20:09] HUNT: It looks like we may have lost Gabe Cohen's signal there. We're going to be working on getting him back to you, as we keep you updated on all the breaking news this morning. Our thanks to Gabe.

Coming up next here, an update on a developing story. Police on the campus of UCLA after a night of violent clashes between rival protest groups.

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HUNT: Welcome back. This just in: tensions have now escalated on the campus of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

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HUNT: Protesters clashing with police in riot gear. The demonstrators were seen throwing trash at the officers.

Police were called in after the university instructed them to leave the campus, and they refused. Several people were arrested.

[06:25:03]

This is live video from Tulane University in New Orleans. Police coming in to arrest several people there overnight. The encampment -- encampment on that campus looks like it's now being taken down.

Tulane officials say most of these protesters are not affiliated with the university.

At City College in New York, protesters lit flares as they chanted in the streets outside the college, and things quickly escalated from there. Demonstrators clashed with police as they were pushed back from the street.

Coming up next here, police trying to restore order on the UCLA campus after hours of fighting between rival protest groups.

Plus, what does Donald Trump think of the protesters at colleges across America? We'll bring you his comments next.

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HUNT: All right, back now to our breaking news at UCLA.

[06:30:00]