NYPD Prevents Reporter From Leaving Building in Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protest: ‘They Won’t Let Me Out’
New York riot police locked a reporter in a room on Tuesday evening and refused to let her out during the New York Police Department’s crackdown on a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University.
The City reporter Gwynne Hogan posted a video on social media amid the crackdown that showed her locked in a room with student protesters as police in riot gear stood guard outside, preventing exit.
“In the building where I’m currently blocked in by police, they won’t let me out despite showing many of them my NYPD press pass,” wrote Hogan, who had been reporting on the protest and subsequent police response. “Students chant as more are lead away in zip ties who’d been blocking ‘Hinds Hall.'”
Two-and-a-half hours after her initial post, Hogan made a follow-up post announcing that she had finally been let out of the building.
After arriving on campus, police with riot shields stormed Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which had been occupied by protesters and renamed “Hind’s Hall” after a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces.
Other reporters at the location, including CNN reporter and Columbia University student Julia Vargas Jones, were forced by police to vacate the area.
Shortly before the NYPD’s arrival on campus, students were advised by Columbia University to “shelter in place for safety.”
“Non compliance may result in discipline,” the university warned.
