The protest situation escalated with the taking of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall: Former NYPD top brass

Ray Kelly has some ideas, of course. The former NYPD commissioner, gardening and group CEO Ray, always good to see you. You get this sense. Not everywhere, but in a lot of these college protests that the police are told don’t, don’t, don’t make a big scene out of it. We can deal with this, but they’re not dealing with it well. The ball is in the the court of the schools, mostly. Obviously there’s some public institutions that may be a little bit different in other states, but clearly in Columbia, the administration has to make the call. The police are not going to go in. They’re uninvited, let’s put it that way. If there’s an emergency, if there’s somebody who’s being assaulted, obviously they see that, then they will go in. But unless they’re invited by the administration, then I kind of go in because they need to complain it. You need someone in court that says this person, that person is a trespasser, should not have been there. You know, they’d be given a a desk appearance ticket, they’ll be given a Criminal Court summons and they’ll be told to respond to that maybe 30-40 days down the road. It’s not the deterrent that it used to be, quite frankly. So even with arrests, I’m not certain you’re going to see a significant change. I think in my view, this is largely motivated by Students for Justice in Palestine. They have 200 chapters on college campuses throughout America. This is, this is look, looks to me like a conspiracy because crimes are being committed. I would hope that the federal authorities are looking at this. Who’s doing funding who who where are these outside into the instigators coming from? There’s just an awful lot that we don’t know. And I think nearly you’re probably right that the the police have been told to to go very easy and in a lot of these college campuses, which is probably a good thing. But you know, one of the things, Commissioner, I didn’t understand Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was talking in Congress earlier today, that there there are no, you know, personnel from his office at Columbia or any of these other institutions. Michael Gordon, the the the education secretary, I apologize, had said that no, there’s none of his personnel at Columbia or any of these others. They’re monitoring all of this. But it does seem to be an official hands off, to echo what you just mentioned. And I’m wondering if the universities involved and colleges involved aren’t taking matters into their own hands. And I want to be fair. Some of them indeed are in Texas, for example, but most are not. And they’re hoping maybe this plays out. It’s the end of the school year for most. I mean, this is exam week and all that. And maybe they’re trying to run out the clock in this and hope cooler heads prevail after that. But what do you think? Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that’s exactly what is happening. And they’re going to kick the cans on the road, hope that somehow dissipates. Like, for instance, in Columbia. Their graduation day is May 15th and schools of the university have a graduation ceremony even before that. So I think that’s what they’re they’re betting on. If they call in the police, they’ve already done that once before. You know this will be a slightly different undertaking. The is a criminal acts and they’re going to have to probably unchain people and be somewhat very prudent as far as going in these there may be weapons involved this this situation has escalated significantly with the with the taking of Hamilton Hall. Yeah, It’s such an iconic institution to say that the the center of the school administration very quickly, John Kirby had said that he was not aware, commissioner, of any evidence of bad actors either aggravating or storming these protests or actually expanding on them. But you have concerns that might be the case. Absolutely. I think there’s no question about it that there are outside the instigators who are on campus, as they say it, SJP, but there are other organizations that can provide them. This is you know as people said the tensor uniform you know there there there is some sort of overarching direction that I believe is is going forward here and I’m not certain that this will end with the with the graduation I think you know or it may very well pick up again next year. These, these people see themselves, many of them as zealots and they’re sort of relishing this, this fight, if I can get the the sense of what’s going on. No, I think you’re right that that that fight is spreading and it’s going on here. And the end of the school year might not be the end of it at all. Ray Kelly, always good seeing you. Thank you very much.