The state’s attorney general said the move to arrest and remove pro-Palestininian protesters from the University of Virginia campus was necessary after weeks of lawless acts that some students dispute.
Twenty-five people were arrested Saturday at the Charlottesville campus after police clashed with protesters.
On Sunday morning, Attorney General Jason Miyares spoke in support of the state police action, calling student claims that the police response was disproportionate as “good PR spin by those on the other side.”
“Virginia is not New York,” Miyares told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. “You have a very different governor. You have a very different attorney general, and we’re not going to tolerate that.”
Miyares described the students’ response as the actions of “coddled children.” He said the use of state police resources meant “they were not dealing with our fentanyl crisis.”
“What you had at U.Va. was students that were warned repeatedly they were violating both their student code of conduct, that it was an unlawful assembly, there was trespassing, there were outsiders that were there,” Miyares said.
The attorney general said the officers were attempting to do a “wellness check” and ensure there weren’t weapons in the encampment. Miyares did not say whether police found weapons.
The protesters “blocked and surrounded” campus police attempting to do this wellness check, Miyares said. “They had to retreat. That’s when they asked for the state police to intervene.”
Miyares also claimed “outside agitators,” particularly at Virginia Commonwealth University, are involved, directing protesters on how to go about flanking officers and going to more extremes.
“We even see them taking water bottles, pouring half of it out, putting bear spray in the water bottles and throwing them at these officers,” Miyares said. “Basically, using them as chemical agents to try and assault our officers.”
Protest groups rejected the claims that outside actors were involved in the protest.
Students disagree with claims, blame policy change for police response
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan said that the pro-Palestinian protest on the campus grounds ended after “aggressive conduct” from protesters who failed to follow directives from law enforcement.
“Unfortunately, a small group today made a choice to willingly break the rules after being given many opportunities to comply, and they then refused to leave the site voluntarily. I sincerely wish it were otherwise, but this repeated and intentional refusal to comply with reasonable rules intended to secure the safety, operations and rights of the entire university community left us with no other choice,” Ryan said in a statement.
The school said that campus, local and state police responded to “multiple and repeated violations of several University policies, including the use of tents and amplified sound.”
Students with a coalition of organizations participating in protest efforts decried the action from state officials after the arrests on Saturday.
“Peaceful anti-war, anti-genocide protesters were met with violence from state police,” organizers with Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Virginia said in a social media statement. “They are currently being barred from accessing their housing and academic life.”
Those students said that the university secretly changed policies related to tent use the morning of May 4 in order to justify the use of “violent police action” and call officers to “crush a peaceful protest and assault participants, claiming it was to ‘ensure the physical safety of our community.'”
WTOP has reached out to the school for a response to the group’s claims.
“UVA’s policy was changed this morning so that setting up tents would violate school policy,” the school’s Indian Student Association said. “Despite students engaging in peaceful forms of expression, they were met with tear gas and force by police.”
A Virginia State Police police spokeswoman said officers “deployed pepper spray Saturday during the civil disturbance at UVA.”
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