Students arrested during the police crackdown on protests at universities in New York City last week were denied water and food for 16 hours, according to two faculty members at Columbia University’s Barnard College who collected reports from students who were inside.
Other students reported that they were beaten by New York City Police Department officers after their arrests and taken to the hospital for injuries before being returned to central booking. Photos of the injuries were provided to The Intercept.
Police arrested 282 protesters at Columbia University and the City College of New York. According to the professors, they ended up at one of two jails downtown: NYPD headquarters or the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.
“The conditions we’re hearing about are inhumane. They take away the dignity of every person in there.”
Students arrested during the crackdown said at least two of them were put in solitary confinement for three hours and others reported much longer stays, according to Barnard College professor Shayoni Mitra and a tenured faculty member who asked for anonymity to protect their livelihood. The faculty members were working to support jailed students. (The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Other students reported that they were held in mouse-infested cells, along with the general population of the jail. The students told the professors that they weren’t given water or food for 16 hours and that at least one student was left without shoes for the same period of time.
“The conditions we’re hearing about are inhumane,” Mitra told The Intercept. “They take away the dignity of every person in there.”
Police forces and state troopers raided university protests at dozens of campuses across the country last week. Nationwide, police have arrested more than 2,500 people, according to an arrest tracker from The Appeal.
On Monday, Columbia University canceled its main graduation ceremony citing security concerns and discussions with students. The university said it would only hold smaller celebrations for individual schools.
The Legal Aid Society, a public defense organization in New York City, called on the city’s Department of Investigation to probe at least 46 cases in which protesters were “unlawfully jailed” for low-level charges, the New York Daily News reported.
“That was perhaps the most surprising thing I’ve ever heard.”
In a letter sent on Monday to the city Department of Investigation, Legal Aid expressed its support for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ request for an investigation into the NYPD’s use of official social media accounts to falsely claim that protests were connected to terrorism.
“We are writing in support of [Adams’s] call for your office to look into the inappropriate use of the NYPD’s social media platforms, specifically their dissemination of misleading information to discredit protesters and deter future demonstrations by baselessly linking them to terrorism – a clear abuse of the NYPD’s power,” Legal Aid stated.
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