An anti-Israel demonstrator arrested during the Columbia University and City College campus riots once declared that the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack was one of the “best days of my life,” a law enforcement official said. he told the Post. The past was revealed one after another on Thursday.
Rudy Ralph Martinez, 32, was among 282 protesters who were handcuffed and taken away by New York City police when they encountered an unruly mob during a crackdown at tent encampments at both schools late Tuesday. He was one of the participants and one of the instigators.
Law enforcement officials said Martinez, who was arrested on suspicion of robbery at City College’s Harlem campus, is a serial protester on the anti-Israel front.
He was caught on camera praising Hamas during a protest in New York City in December, and the footage went viral on a social media show.
“One of the best days of my life,” Martinez said with a grin as she talked about the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“Long live the resistance movement,” he added, according to the video.
Martinez, who police believe may be currently working for the city after recently graduating from City University of New York, has a history of “widespread arrests” in California dating back to 2012. “He has a long history,” the official said.
In the Big Apple alone, Martinez’s rap sheet includes numerous arrests for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstruction and refusing to disperse, officials said.
He wasn’t the only serial protester.
One of the instigators arrested inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall has a long history of protest-related violence, including an incident that allegedly seriously injured a police officer nearly a decade ago.
James Carlson, 40, who was handcuffed on the Ivy League campus on suspicion of robbery, is a “long-time figure in anarchist circles” and anti-government “extremist circles,” sources said.
New York City police officials said he was accused of attempted lynching and aggravated assault on a police officer after a violent political protest in San Francisco in 2005 left a police officer seriously injured in the head. He was reportedly indicted on charges of.
Carlson and his men are accused of setting fire to a police car and then attempting to shoot at officers. The outcome of the charges in the case was not immediately known.
Most recently, prosecutors announced that Carlson (also known as Cody) was charged with burning a Jewish protester’s Israeli flag outside Columbia University on April 21st.
During the trial, police said the gunman stole the 22-year-old victim’s flag, another threw a rock at the victim, and a third assailant set the flag on fire.
Police on Wednesday charged Carlson with mischief, possession of stolen property and arson stemming from that incident. Police are still hunting the other two suspects.
Mr. Carlson was released on his own recognizance at his arraignment Thursday in Manhattan Criminal Court and is scheduled to appear before a judge on June 20.
Officials said he also took part in protests in January that blocked entrances to the Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge.
Another protester arrested at the City University of New York, Jacob Isaac Gabriel, 27, is among a number of arrests related to the protests.
Gabriel often appears at protests in the Big Apple wearing Black Bloc gear, a tactic police officials say is used by protesters to protect their identities with ski masks and helmets.
The official said he was among hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who stormed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
His rap sheet includes recent charges including resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, refusal to move, violation of public administration, fighting and trespassing, officials said.
A day after Mayor Eric Adams warned that “outside agitators” were radicalizing young people, more than 40% of protesters arrested in campus riots were not actually students. New details have been revealed by police officials.
Of the 282 protesters taken during the NYPD’s large-scale operation, 134 had no connection to either school, according to NYPD officials.
Adams told NPR, “This is a preliminary look at the numbers, and this is just the early stages of analysis, but more than 40% of participants at Columbia University and City College are not from those schools, but are outsiders. It seems like it was,” he told NPR. .
