A conflict between police and pro-Palestinian protesters at UC Irvine now consists of the mayors of Irvine and Newport Seashore.
After his metropolis’s police division responded to a request for mutual assist on the Orange County campus Wednesday, Newport Seashore Mayor Will O’Neill took umbrage with a social media submit by Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan, who requested the faculty administration to keep away from a “violent situation” with the protests.
The scene performed out similarly to different pro-Palestinian demonstrations on faculty campuses throughout the nation, with police in riot gear clashing with scholar protesters.
The UC Irvine administration put out a name for police companies from throughout Orange County to hitch the Irvine Police Division and the Orange County Sheriff’s Division “as protesters swarmed the campus becoming a member of a bunch of protesters who had established an encampment on the campus,” the college mentioned Wednesday afternoon in an emergency bulletin.
Khan, who took the mayoral workplace in 2020, wrote in a submit on the social media platform X that it was “a disgrace that peaceable free speech protests are at all times responded to with violence. Taking area on campus or in a constructing isn’t a risk to anybody.”
The college’s “management should do all the pieces they will to keep away from making a violent situation right here. These are your college students w/ zero weapons,” Khan mentioned.
Khan, a Democrat elected to the Metropolis Council in 2018, is the primary Muslim girl to carry the Irvine mayor’s workplace.
Her feedback drew a swift response from O’Neill, who accused her of “careless wording.” The submit, O’Neill mentioned on X, “makes it seem that you’re preemptively accusing our officers, and officers from the various regulation enforcement companies who responded, of violence.”
“If that’s what you meant, then your message is beneath the workplace of Mayor. If it’s not, then make clear instantly,” mentioned O’Neill, a Republican who’s at the moment serving in his second time period as Newport Seashore’s mayor.
O’Neill mentioned in an emailed assertion to The Instances on Thursday that Khan’s “preemptive insult” to the police companies who responded to the request for regulation enforcement on campus was “reckless and ill-advised.”
He’s requested for clarification or an apology to the Newport Seashore Police Division, however mentioned he hasn’t heard from town of Irvine.
“Her phrases, although, won’t cease the Newport Seashore Police Division from offering mutual assist to the great residents of Irvine within the occasion that help is required once more,” O’Neill mentioned. “Our Newport Seashore Police Division solutions the decision, and I’m pleased with them.”
Khan didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The actions at UC Irvine started round 2:30 p.m. Wednesday amid protesters’ calling on the college to divest from corporations with ties to Israel. The campus introduced in a social media submit {that a} group of protesters had entered a lecture corridor, with the constructing takeover broadcast over Instagram. Protesters hung indicators that learn, “UC Divest from genocide,” whereas others erected a barricade with picket pallets.
Cops moved into the campus Wednesday night armed with nonlethal projectile launchers and ripped down the makeshift obstacles and encampments.
The college, which moved lessons on-line Thursday, reported that fifty individuals have been arrested.
