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| DPS officers at UT protest April 24 arrested almost 50 people who can expect charges to be dropped - Capitol Inside photos |
Politicians and Police Give Protestors Win
By Turning Peaceful UT Event into Melee
Capitol Inside
April 25, 2024
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick portrayed a pro-Palestine demonstration at the University of Texas on Wednesday as a failed campus coup while Governor Greg Abbott demanded the ouster of hundreds of students who participated in the protest that his alma mater sought to cancel the previous day.
Neither one of the powerful Republican leaders actually attended the event on which they tried to capitalize politically with social media posts tailored for base voters. But objective eyewitnesses could have told them that the protest had been peaceful and harmless albeit unauthorized before dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety arrived decked in riot gear and began arresting people at Abbott's command with blessings from university officials.
More than 40 people were arrested and held overnight at the Travis County jail where fellow protestors waited outside for hours on Thursday for their release and an explanation on why they'd been apprehended and detained. A UT official said during the melee that most of the protestors appeared to be students at the school where Abbott wants them kicked out.
"These protesters belong in jail," Abbott said on Wednesday in a post on X. "Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.
Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled."
Most of the arrests stemmed from
physical alterations that the state and local police appeared to initiate while trying to disperse the demonstrators by pushing them down a hill on the mall below the administration building.
It will come as no surprise if the Travis County Attorney Delia Garza throws out all of the cases that stem from the protest based on a lack of probable cause.
A Fox News 7 photographer was thrown to the ground by officers, handcuffed and taken to jail for no apparent reason based on a video that the television station posted on its web site. One veteran journalist in his 70s was knocked on his back by an officer who shoved him in the chest for apparently failing to move back while taking photos of police wrestling protestors to the ground.
No one who witnessed the event would have characterized it the way that Patrick did in a string of social media posts on Wednesday afternoon.
"Thank you
@TxDPS and
@UTAustinPolice
for shutting down the attempted takeover of the university by pro-Hamas protesters," the lieutenant governor said on X. "In Texas, we won't allow antisemitic, pro-Hamas protesters to take control of our universities. Protesters were warned to disperse before any arrests were made."
Patrick chided protestors for militant vocabularies and rhetoric while flaunting his status as someone who's lived in the Lone Star State for much of his adult life. "And a note to protestors for future reference: We don’t call each other comrades in Texas. We call each other Texans," the Texas Senate boss said.
Abbott and Patrick may not have been aware that the protestors emerged from the donnybrook in academia as the biggest winners thanks to the aggressive law enforcement strategy and arrests that elevated the story to the top of national news budgets - the ultimate goal for organizers at such an event.
The protest would have been a footnote at the end of newscasts in Texas at best if UT administrators would have ignored it instead of making it possible for politicians to milk it and beat their chests.
The DPS defended its officers actions in a statement last night on X - saying the state police intervened "to prevent any unlawful assembly and to support UT Police in maintaining the peace by arresting anyone engaging in any type of criminal activity, including criminal trespass."
But Palestine Solidarity Committee coordinator Abdelmajid depicted the law enforcement behavior as a blatant attack on the constitutional right of free speech.
"The fact that they are holding people at all for as long as they are going to be is ridiculous. I mean they are arresting people left and right every ninety seconds," Abdelmajid said in a statement that the Fox affiliate in Austin published. "These are students who are using their First Amendment right to speak up for what they care about and to talk about the things that they want to talk about on campus."
more to come ...
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