Quick Take
More than 100 protesters who were arrested by police at the UC Santa Cruz Gaza solidarity encampment in May have yet to be formally charged by the Santa Cruz County district attorney’s office. Assistant District Attorney Steve Drottar told Lookout the office hasn’t received UCSC police reports yet and is waiting to review those to determine if it will file charges.
Arraignments for protesters who were arrested at the Gaza solidarity encampment at UC Santa Cruz in May will likely be postponed once again, according to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office.
University police, with assistance from law enforcement agencies from as far as Truckee, arrested 122 people – including students, faculty and some community members – at the UC Santa Cruz encampment May 31. All of those arrested received police citations for failure to disperse, and several faced additional charges of resisting arrest and battery of an officer.
For many, arraignments set for July were later rescheduled for Sept. 2.
But Assistant District Attorney Steve Drottar told Lookout on Tuesday his office still hasn’t received any reports of the arrests from UCSC police and therefore hasn’t been able to review them and make any charging decisions.
At an arraignment hearing, individuals arrested by police have an opportunity to hear the official charging decisions against them by the district attorney’s office.
Across the country, more than 3,000 protesters have been arrested at campus actions this past year. In many cases, charges have been dropped, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Lookout asked Drottar if it’s unusual for reports to take this long. He said: “If they want to submit the reports, they submit the reports. If they make a different decision, then they make a different decision and don’t submit them.”
Once the district attorney’s office gets the reports, Drottar said it will take the office time to go through all of them – especially if UCSC police pursue charges against all 122 people they arrested. Considering all the time it would take for the office to review the reports and make charging decisions, it’s not likely the protesters who received arraignment dates of Sept. 2 will indeed have those next week.
“At this point, no – they’re not going to be arraigned on Sept. 2,” said Drottar.
UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason has not responded to requests for comment.
Earlier this month, University of California system president Michael Drake said his office was implementing new policies for protest activities, including a ban on encampments.
“While the vast majority of protests held on our campuses are peaceful and nonviolent, some of the activities we saw this past year were not,” he wrote in a statement.
Drake said the Office of the President’s staff worked over the summer with students, faculty, staff and the board of regents to reinforce the university system’s policies across its 10 campuses.
For example, he said the university is working on “clarifying and reinforcing requirements for policies impacting expressive activities, including policies that prohibit camping or encampments, unauthorized structures, restrictions on free movement, masking to conceal identity, and refusing to reveal one’s identity when asked to do so by University personnel.”
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