Police raid UVa encampment, arrest anti-war protesters

State police sporting tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, using pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the roughly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, faculty and community members had sang songs, read poetry and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

As of press time Saturday evening, those protesters that had not been taken into custody had been pushed away from the plot of land by the University Chapel where they had been based and into street, where a flood of supporters were pouring in. What had started as a quiet and rain-drenched protest of a meager 15 Saturday morning was a vocal and angry crowd of nearly 100 Saturday evening.

After days of an almost picnic-like protest and minimal police presence, the sudden and swift arrival of the militant Virginia State Police appears to have been in direct response to the protesters’ decision to pitch tents on UVa Grounds Friday evening ahead of rain.

University officials had been explicit that tents are prohibited without first being approved by the administration. According to UVa policy, all tents must receive final approval before being assembled on Grounds.

But that same policy includes a link to a document which says that “Recreational tents for camping are exempt.” That clause was quietly removed Saturday morning, hours before police made arrests.

University spokesman Brian Coy told The Daily Progress that the document was merely “guidance” and that it was updated to reflect official policy. Coy said the document was not outdated, “just wrong.”

He said he believed it was not until Saturday morning that university officials noticed the “guidance” document contradicted the official policy. Demonstrators first started to congregate on Grounds Tuesday, the last day of spring semester classes.

“Anyone who has been involved in this encampment or any other demonstration has been advised of our policy,” Coy said, pointing out that shortly after the encampment began, tents were raised but then disassembled by the protesters. “They put up then took them down because they were made aware that [tents] were outside of our policy. They then made the decision to violate that policy.”

A faculty member affiliated with the encampment cited that clause, telling The Daily Progress that recreational tents are permitted on campus.

“We pointed it out to them for three days. Faculty have been deescalating, deescalating, deescalating,” she said.

The faculty member said the protest had been calm and peaceful until state police were called in on Saturday. She claims that decision was made by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and UVa President Jim Ryan.

Neither the governor’s office nor the Virginia State Police responded to multiple inquiries from The Daily Progress Saturday. A personal inquiry from Daily Progress editor Reynolds Hutchins to Ryan’s office and the UVa communications team also went unanswered.

As of press time Saturday evening, it remained unclear how the decision was made to dispatch state police to Grounds.

The quiet encampment had received little attention from students throughout most of the week. But on Saturday, as authorities created a line around the encampment, a huge crowd gathered around to witness the police response.

Roughly 15 people broke the police line to join the encampment, eliciting loud cheers from the crowd as they sprinted toward the tents.

Not long before 2:30 p.m., police ordered observers to move further back from the site. Shortly after, police with riot shields marched into the encampment and began making arrests. A line of protesters used umbrellas in an attempt to keep the police at bay, but police tossed the umbrellas to the side and threw protesters to the ground while pepper spray was deployed overhead.

Several protesters screamed out as police dragged them away. An officer told The Daily Progress that those arrested were being taken to Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

“It hurts really bad, man,” one of the protesters told The Daily Progress while pouring water onto his face and eyes. He identified himself as a graduate student and said the police response was disproportionate.

“It was never violent,” he said of the encampment. “I’m a teaching assistant, and we were just helping people study for finals.”

After the encampment was cleared, a line of police began to push against a growing crowd of protesters to their backs, some of whom had come out to support the original demonstrators, others who were there to witness the scene unfold. Police indiscriminately sprayed pepper spray into the crowd, at one point hitting a Daily Progress reporter and other members of the media covering the conflict.

Amid the chaos, some students carrying American flags cheered on the arrests, with chants of “USA,” “Let’s go Wahoos” and “Take your masks off.” The latter a reference to the fact that nearly of the protesters have remained masked since Tuesday and discouraged their ranks from identifying themselves to police, the media or UVa administrators.

A protester with a megaphone called out to the state police as they marched on the crowd, “Where were you in 2017?”

On Aug. 11, 2017, a day before the deadly Unite the Right rally-turned-riot in Charlottesville, a mob of torch-wielding neo-Nazis and other White supremacists marched across Grounds. Police watched on as the mob encircled a band of student protesters at the base of the statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of the university’s landmark Rotunda. Police did not declare an unlawful assembly and clear the area until after the mob began brandishing their torches at protesters and assaulting students. At the time, the mob’s activities were permitted by the university as an act of free expression.

As of press time, police had closed off University Avenue and Rugby Road, two of the university’s main entrance corridors, and the university was warning the public to stay away from the scene.