In blue cities across the country, pro-Hamas protesters pretty much do whatever they want to disrupt the lives of everyday Americans without fear of punishment — as seen at Columbia University, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Chicago’s airport.
Another example emerged in Washington, D.C., on Saturday and illustrated why this continues to happen.
Around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to PJ Media, DC police were ready to move in and clear a tent encampment set up by pro-Hamas protesters on the campus of George Washington University.
Yet the Metropolitan Police Department brass and Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office told the cops to stand down.
Read: Top Hamas Official Lays Out One Condition To Disarm, End War Against Israel
Police were “worried about the optics of moving against a small number of peaceful protesters, according to two officials familiar with the talks,” the Washington Post reported, according to PJ Media.
City officials also told GWU administrators that they “wanted to avoid images of violent altercations between police and protesters flashing across TV screens across the country,” the Post added.
They cited as an example the images from June 2020, when U.S. Park Police cleared BLM and Antifa protesters from Lafayette Square in Washington.
But as PJ Media noted, the university is on private property and the protesters have no right to be on it.
The Post reported that the cops said that under those conditions, they need to be invited by the school to take action on the campus after the protesters were declared trespassers or were on the verge of committing other crimes.
Read: Police Clear Encampment At Major University In Boston After Protesters Shout ‘Kill The Jews’
Yet GWU in fact announced on Friday that the pro-Hamas students had violated multiple university policies, were identified as trespassers, and some had been temporarily suspended.
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which advises local police departments on best practices, said he had never seen anything like this.
As PJ Media’s Rick Moran noted, “Encouraging students to protest by not arresting them is going to lead to those ‘bad optics’ the police department is so terrified of.”
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