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      Columbia Asks N.Y.P.D. to Stay on Campus Through Middle of May

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      Columbia University asked the New York Police Department in a letter on Tuesday to clear a building occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters and encampments, and asked that the police remain on campus until at least May 17, after commencement.President Nemak Shafit requested the N.Y.P.D.’s assistance in a letter that was released after police entered Hamilton Hall and arrested protesters that had occupied the building on early Tuesday. Columbia’s commencement is currently scheduled for May 15.By late evening, dozens of police officers had arrived, climbed through windows on campus and arrested protesters who had occupied a building since early Tuesday. Much of the campus had been cleared of people, although dozens of protesters still chanted outside of its gates.Dr. Shafik said in the letter that “the takeover of Hamilton Hall and the continued encampments raise serious safety concerns for the individuals involved and the entire community,” adding that “these activities have become a magnet for protesters outside our gates which creates significant risk to our campus and disrupts the ability of the University to continue normal operations.”A decision earlier this month to bring police onto campus to clear a tent protest led to sharp criticism from some students and faculty. But Dr. Shafik said on Tuesday that she was left with “no choice.”“With the support of the University’s Trustees, I have determined that the building occupation, the encampments, and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the University and require the use of emergency authority to protect persons and property,” she wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      More Than 170 Protesters Arrested at Northeastern and Arizona State University

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      The police made arrests at Northeastern University, Arizona State and Indiana University on Saturday, as more schools move in on encampments protesting the war in Gaza.Nearly 200 protesters were arrested on Saturday at Northeastern University, Arizona State University and Indiana University, according to officials, as colleges across the country struggle to quell growing pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments on campus.More than 700 protesters have been arrested on U.S. campuses since April 18, when Columbia University had the New York Police Department clear a protest encampment there. In several cases, most of those who were arrested have been released. More

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      A Dispatch From Inside Columbia’s Student-Led Protest for Gaza

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      On Wednesday morning, on a corner across the street from Columbia University, a man dressed in black, a huge gold cross around his neck, brandished a sign that featured a bloodstained Israeli flag and the word “genocide” in capital letters. He was also shouting at the top of his lungs.“The Jews control the world! Jews are murderers!”I watched as a pro-Palestine protester approached the man. “That is horribly antisemitic,” she said. “You are hurting the movement and you are not a part of us. Go away.”The man shouted vile, unprintable epithets back at her, but the woman, who told me she had come to New York from her home in Baltimore to support the protesting students, walked away.Hours later, a well-known congressional reporter covering House Speaker Mike Johnson’s visit to Columbia’s campus posted a photograph of the same man. “One sign here at the Columbia protest,” the reporter, Jake Sherman, wrote. “This man is ranting about Jews controlling the universe.”The man wasn’t “at the Columbia protest.” The university’s campus has been closed to outsiders for over a week — even as a journalist and an alumnus, I had trouble getting in. He was, several people on social media told Sherman, a well-known antisemitic crank completely unconnected from what was unfolding on campus. Indeed, last week I had seen a man wearing an identical cross carrying a similarly lettered sign that read, “Google it! Jews vs. TikTok” protesting outside Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Lower Manhattan. He was, for the record, standing on the pro-Trump side of the protest area.But the incident is emblematic of how difficult it has become to make sense of what is actually happening on college campuses right now. As the protests have spread to dozens of campuses and counting, competing viral clips on social media paint vastly different versions of what’s happening inside these pro-Palestine camps. Are they violent conflict zones, filled with militant protesters who hurl antisemitic abuse and threaten Jewish students, requiring, as some political leaders have suggested, deployment of the National Guard? Or is it a giant love-fest of students braiding daisy chains and singing “Kumbaya”?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYC School Crossing Guard Charged With Trying to Lure What He Thought Was Teen Into Sex

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      Jared Jeridore, who worked near a Queens school, was arrested after complaints about him led the police to have an officer pose as a teenage girl, officials said.A Queens man who worked as a school crossing guard was charged on Wednesday with attempted rape and other crimes after he tried to lure an undercover police officer he believed to be a 14-year-old girl into a sexual act, officials said.The charges against the man, Jared Jeridore, included attempted use of a child in a sexual performance, attempted dissemination of indecent material to minors and official misconduct, Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, said.“Young people need to be able to trust the adults who are charged with keeping them safe,” Ms. Katz said in a statement. “This defendant is accused of violating that trust with someone he thought was a teenager.”Mr. Jeridore, 24, of Jamaica, made an initial appearance before Judge Julieta Lozano of Queens Criminal Court on Wednesday. She ordered him to return to court in June. A lawyer for Mr. Jeridore did not immediately respond to a request for comment.School crossing guards are part-time Police Department employees who earn $18 an hour. Mr. Jeridore, who worked near a school in Jamaica, was suspended from his job after being arrested on Wednesday and subsequently resigned, a police spokeswoman said. It was unclear how long he had been a crossing guard.The undercover investigation began after underage individuals complained about Mr. Jeridore to the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, according to a criminal complaint.On the morning of March 28, the complaint says, an undercover officer posing as a 14-year-old girl met Mr. Jeridore at a Jamaica intersection about a block from a secondary school. The complaint does not name the school but lists an address that belongs to York Early College Academy.On April 18, the undercover officer and Mr. Jeridore exchanged Instagram screen names, according to the complaint. That afternoon, the complaint says, they walked together from the same intersection to a nearby bus stop, and Mr. Jeridore interlocked his arm with the officer’s.Around 11:30 that night, Mr. Jeridore and the officer had a video call, the complaint says. Mr. Jeridore, believing the officer was 14 and soon to turn 15, asked her to join him in a sex act, according to the complaint.Over the next several days, Mr. Jeridore sent messages via Instagram to a second officer who was posing as the first one, the complaint says. In the messages, he described the sexual interactions he hoped to have and sent the officer nude photos and sexually explicit video, according to the complaint.On Tuesday, the complaint says, Mr. Jeridore called the first undercover officer several times and asked her to meet him at a local hotel to have sex. Officers arrested Mr. Jeridore when he arrived, according to the complaint. More

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      Mayor Adams Pushes Out Chairwoman of Police Oversight Board

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      Arva Rice was asked to resign after she criticized police handling of a fatal shooting investigation and requested more money and power to investigate misconduct.The interim chairwoman of an independent police oversight panel who had fiercely criticized the Police Department will step down at the request of Mayor Eric Adams, according to three people familiar with the matter.The official, Arva Rice, has chaired the panel, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, since Mr. Adams installed her in February 2022, calling her “a champion for equity and justice.”But she has drawn the anger of police officials for criticizing delays in handing over evidence in the fatal shooting of a Bronx man in his home five years ago — and for requesting a larger budget and more power to investigate complaints against police officers.Ms. Rice was appointed interim chairwoman of the oversight panel in February 2022.Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for NYULThe resignation request was delivered by Mr. Adams’s deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III, who served as the Police Department’s top uniformed officer before resigning under the cloud of a federal corruption investigation in 2014, according to two of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal City Hall personnel matters. Mr. Banks was never charged.Ms. Rice, who also serves as president and chief executive of the New York Urban League, is expected to comply with the request in coming weeks, the people said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Intruder Breaks Into Los Angeles Mayor’s Residence

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      The Getty House was broken into early Sunday through a smashed window, the police said. Mayor Karen Bass said she and her family were safe. The Getty House in Los Angeles, the official residence of Mayor Karen Bass, was broken into early Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department said. The police took the intruder into custody, officials said. Details on the break-in were scant, but the police said on social media that the intruder had entered the Getty House after smashing a window around 6:40 a.m., while Ms. Bass and her family were inside. Ms. Bass’s office said in a statement that she and her family were safe and had not sustained any injuries.“The mayor is grateful to L.A.P.D. for responding and arresting the suspect,” Ms. Bass’s office said in a statement.The police did not identify the suspect and said that the investigation was ongoing. The suspect is currently being processed, and officials will then release more details, Tony Im, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said.The Getty House is in Windsor Square, a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles. The city, with a population of about four million, was struggling with a surge in homelessness and violent crime when Ms. Bass took office in December 2022, two years into the pandemic. But data show that rates of violent crime have gone down in the city more recently. According to the Los Angeles Police’s report on crime in 2023, homicides went down that year by 17 percent from the year before. There were slight upticks in some nonviolent crimes, however. Property crimes increased by about 3.5 percent, and motor vehicle thefts went up by 2 percent, compared with the previous year, the report said. The Los Angeles Police said they would not categorize the Getty House break-in until booking is completed. In her State of the City Address this month, Ms. Bass hailed the city’s progress in lowering crime rates and homelessness. “Over the last year, we have done big things together,“ Ms. Bass said. “Thousands more unhoused Angelenos came inside, and homicide and violent crime came down last year.” In September 2022, before she took office as mayor, Ms. Bass’s personal home in the city’s Baldwin Vista neighborhood was burglarized. Two thieves stole two handguns at the time. In recent years, several politicians have been targeted in break-ins and swatting attempts.One high-profile case involved Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco in October 2022, when she was speaker of the House. Ms. Pelosi was not there at the time, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, was assaulted by an intruder with a hammer. Mr. Pelosi sustained severe injuries, including a skull fracture. And last December, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she was swatted, or subjected to a hoax call, on Christmas Day. It was not the first time she had been targeted of swatting, she said. “This is like the 8th time,” she wrote on social media after the incident. More

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      3 Alameda Officers Face Charges in Death of Mario Gonzalez

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      The officers, all with the Alameda Police Department at the time, were charged with involuntary manslaughter after the district attorney reopened the case.Three years after police officers in Northern California pinned a man face down for about five minutes as he begged for relief, prosecutors announced that the officers would face charges of involuntary manslaughter in the man’s death.The charges against Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, all with the Alameda Police Department at the time, in the death of Mario Gonzalez, 26, were announced on Thursday, after a review by the Alameda County district attorney’s Public Accountability Unit.The county’s previous district attorney closed the investigation into the officers in 2022, saying that the evidence did not justify criminal charges. But Pamela Price, who was elected district attorney later that year, reopened the case a year ago.The new charges were announced just days after the county’s Registrar of Voters announced that a recall campaign against Ms. Price had submitted enough signatures to proceed.The incident that ended in Mr. Gonzalez’s death began when the officers responded to a call that a man was loitering and behaving strangely in a public park on April 19, 2021.Mr. Gonzalez was wandering at the edge of the park, near a row of houses. Body camera footage captured Officer McKinley approaching Mr. Gonzalez in a friendly manner, asking him if he was OK. Mr. Gonzalez spoke incoherently, standing near two shopping baskets of liquor bottles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia Students Who Were Arrested Face Uncertain Consequences

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      Students who camped in tents to protest the war in Gaza, including the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, may be barred from finishing the semester.Many of the more than 100 Columbia University and Barnard College students who were arrested after refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus on Thursday woke up to a chilly new reality this week: Columbia said that their IDs would soon stop working, and some of them would not be able to finish the semester.The students who were arrested were released with summonses. The university said all of the 100 or so students involved in the protest had been informed that they were suspended.For some of those students, that means they must vacate their student housing, with just weeks before the semester ends.Yet whatever the consequences, several of the students said in interviews that they were determined to keep protesting Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.They said that after being loaded onto buses with their hands tied, they had sung all the way to police headquarters. Many expressed a renewed belief in their cause, and were glad that the eyes of the nation were on Columbia and Barnard, its sister college.The protests, the arrests and the subsequent disciplinary action came a day after the congressional testimony this week of Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, at a hearing about antisemitism on campus. Columbia has said there have been a number of antisemitic episodes, including one attack, and many Jewish students have seen the protests as antisemitic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More