New York City Mayor Eric Adams wanted to send New York police in earlier to break up the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, but “we were not going to overstep out authority,” he said Sunday.
“[We] communicated with the college officials for several days leading up to the New York City police department action, and we knew we had to get permission unless there’s imminent threat to life or severe threat to property, and once the school’s made the determination, we shared the information that we had,” Adams said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Our intelligence division looked at it, and it was concerning to me, but we were not going to overstep our legal authority and right to do so,” he added.
NYPD officers swarmed Columbia University last week, after protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, the same campus building that students advocating for racial justice and an end to the Vietnam War occupied in 1968.
The police response, at both Columbia and the City College of New York, was the largest mobilizations yet of New York City police in response to recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Officers only responded after the colleges formally requested the NYPD’s help, Adams emphasized, though the New York Times reported last week that Adams and police officials made an effort to persuade school leaders that it was time for intervention.
Adams on Sunday also defended the decision to use police at all on the protesters, after Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) warned against the “militarization of our schools.”
“One has the right to have his or her opinion, and I respect that,” Adams said, before turning to a claim he has leaned into since police first responded to the protests at Columbia: that “outside agitators,” had infiltrated the encampments and inflamed tensions.
“When I use the term of ‘outside agitators,’ anyone can protest in the city, but when you are on college grounds and you do not attend that college, you are an outsider, and then when you train people to do destructive things, you are an agitator,” Adams said.