New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard joined the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning and showed some of the chains that were used by anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University to lock doors shut after they occupied a building on campus.
NYPD officers stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia on Tuesday night and arrested dozens of protesters who had illegally occupied the building. Sheppard said that when the police arrived outside the building they encountered “heavy industrial chains” that were locked with bike locks “on every door” at Hamilton Hall.
“This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities,” said Sheppard.
Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard shows the chains used to secure Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.
"This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities." pic.twitter.com/fwFUPZlIj7
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 1, 2024
The deputy commissioner added that police had to push through other obstacles when they swooped in to clear the building.
“In order for our emergency services group to enter into the building, they had to first cut through these chains, but also get rid of debris and barricaded doors that were barricaded with refrigerators, vending machines, chairs, you name it, they pushed it up against those doors to try to stop us from coming in,” he said.
Sheppard praised the work of the NYPD officers who made it into the building and took between 40-50 anti-Israel protesters into custody “without incident.” Video posted on social media also showed NYPD officers driving an armored vehicle with a ladder up to Hamilton Hall, allowing officers to enter the building through a window.
BREAKING: Police at Columbia are entering Hamilton Hall: pic.twitter.com/CjqeC8p6EQ
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 1, 2024
The anti-Israel demonstrators at Columbia have camped out on the campus for nearly two weeks, and a large group of protesters took over Hamilton Hall on Tuesday morning, demanding the Ivy League school divest from Israel as the country fights against Hamas. At least one protester was caught on camera smashing a window in Hamilton Hall, and the group of demonstrators said they were renaming the building to “Hind’s Hall” after “a martyr murdered at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state at the age of six years old.”
Some conservatives have pointed to radical student groups, such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, receiving funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, according to The New York Post.
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“There’s real money behind it,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said. “And if you look at it, in many instances, so copycat tents had been seen at Harvard, at Yale, at Berkeley, at Ohio State, at Emory, and they’re organized by branches of the Students for Justice in Palestine, SJP, funded by George Soros.”
Former President Donald Trump also believes there is more behind the anti-Israel protests at colleges across the country. As the police pushed their way through Hamilton Hall and arrested protesters, Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show, telling the host that he believes many of the demonstrators at Columbia are “paid agitators.”
“I really think you have a lot of paid agitators, professional agitators in here too, and I see it all over,” he said. “You know, when you see signs and they’re all identical. That means they’re being paid by a source.”
“You know, these aren’t hand-painted signs where people would go to their basement and paint something because they really believed that. These are all signs that are identical that made by the same printer,” Trump added. “And you know, when you see that that means there’s somebody at the top that’s paying, or a group that’s paying, and they’re doing a great disservice to the world, but they’re doing a great disservice to our country.”