Police on Thursday night arrested at least a dozen people who occupied an abandoned building on the UC Berkeley campus as part of a protest in support of Palestinians during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
By 7:15 p.m., 12 people had been arrested at the site, according to UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.
Police from multiple agencies arrived at the empty building, at the corner of Channing Way and Bowditch Street, about 1 block from People’s Park, around 6:15 p.m. and gave orders for the protesters to disperse.
The structure, owned by the university, is one of several buildings that make up the former Anna Head School complex, the site of a now-closed girls school. On Wednesday, protesters occupied one of the buildings, which was badly damaged in a fire in 2022 and was boarded up.
“This is not nonviolent civil disobedience. The suspects are trespassing and vandalizing an unsafe, boarded-up, fire-damaged building next to People’s Park,” Mogulof said in an email Thursday, reiterating remarks made Wednesday.
Shortly after 6 p.m., officers from the California Highway Patrol and other agencies began setting up barricades in the area. Police ordered the protesters to disperse, saying they could be arrested, and that force would be used, including potentially pepper spray and tear gas.
Another dispersal order just issued, police asking people to move west and disperse within 15 minutes. More officers with batons and less lethal launchers have just moved into the yard of the UC Berkeley protest house. “Free Palestine” chants pick up. “We are all Palestinians.” pic.twitter.com/9RkSEMa1DQ
— The Berkeley Scanner (@BerkeleyScanner) May 17, 2024
By 7:45 p.m., after clearing people from the front yard, police raided the brown wooden structure. Protesters chanted “Free Palestine!” and “We are all Palestinians.”
The activists had erected tents in the front yard of the building, hung Palestinian flags, and attached a banner that said “Avenge Al-Shifa” on the front of the dilapidated structure, an apparent reference to Al-Shifa Hospital, a medical complex in Gaza City that Israeli troops destroyed last month as part of their invasion of Gaza to after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,100 people.
Israel said Hamas had been using the hospital as cover, and that it had built tunnels under it.
This is a developing story.
