Armored officers from the Los Angeles Police Department and California State Police took control of an illegal camp at the University of California, Los Angeles early Thursday morning, breaking through barricades of pro-Hamas student militants, destroying the occupiers’ tents and arresting them. Some of those who ignored their opinions repeated warnings And an invitation to leave.
LAPD and other law enforcement agencies
answered on UCLA’s campus Tuesday night after the left-leaning university asked for help addressing the effects of the same ideas being taught within its classrooms. It wasn’t until Thursday morning that they succeeded in overcoming the radicals in Dixon Plaza.
Blaze News national correspondent Julio Rosas said the pro-Hamas students, wearing masks and equipped with makeshift shields, were among about 30 LAPD police officers who first invaded the militants’ illegal encampment. I was at the scene confronting a group of government officials. Radicals can be heard mocking and accusing the police officers flanked by them on both sides.
Rosas said the outnumbered officers eventually retreated. The officers abandoned their hard-won positions and had to fight a frenzied mob chasing them from their camp.
“We have no idea what their reason for making the initial incursion was,” Rosas told Blaze News. “But it wasn’t a good one, obviously.”
Similar standoffs appear to have occurred around campus, but it appears to have been difficult for police to penetrate, largely due to the police’s remarkable restraint.
The militants struggled to maintain barricades, hurling rocks at police and attempting to disorient them with fire extinguisher blasts. Officers in turn used multiple flash bangs.
Police, clearly fed up with sporadic attacks by violent selfie-taking mobs, launched a major counterattack around 3 a.m. Pacific time.
“At that time, California Highway Patrol troopers in riot gear initiated multiple incursions into the main side of the encampment, the side with the makeshift fence,” Rosas said. “They were fighting each other. The protesters were using their bodies. They had a lot of shields and pallets and supplies to keep pushing against the riot police.”
Some of the militants tried to form a human chain, but the police clearly found some weaknesses. Rosas noted that about 20 of the chain’s participants were arrested after the police raid.
Rosas reported that around 3:30 a.m., police succeeded in demolishing the main temporary wall adjacent to the illegal camp. In doing so, it soon became clear that the police would soon be able to destroy the encampment and wipe out any remaining militants there.
CHP riot police also advanced on the camp from other directions, destroying militant incitement forces and pushing the occupiers out of the way.
CHP officers waved Palestinian flags in the heart of the illegal encampment, effectively marking the radicals’ defeat.
Before dawn, police were effectively in control of a camp strewn with leftist propaganda and other radical waste.
Rosas said, “This didn’t have to happen. . . . If the encampment had been cleared earlier, without giving the occupiers as much time to prepare, it would have been easier for law enforcement to clear the encampment. It would have been much easier.” But for a while this kind of thing was allowed. ”
When asked about the initial success in repelling the insurgents, Rosas said they were “communicating with each other, asking for reinforcements, asking for supplies, asking for shields at various points along the camp perimeter. That’s part of it.” The reason it took so long for the police to gain a significant foothold is that they were very flexible in deploying personnel and resources. ”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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