SUNDAY: How many outsiders were arrested?

SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2024

The New York Times doesn't seem sure: For starters, we strongly agree with Nia Prater concerning one basic point.

Last week, Prater began writing for New York magazine about the arrests by the NYPD at Columbia University.

On Wednesday, she did an initial post on the subject. On Thursday, it was updated. 

For starters, we agree with the general thrust of the observation with which Prater closed her piece. In this passage, she's speaking about a term of art employed by Mayor Adamas and by the NYPD:

The term outside agitator is notably fraught: It was frequently deployed by authorities to undermine civil-rights protests in the 1960s. And in 2020, New York’s then-police commissioner Dermot Shea used the term to justify harsh police crackdowns on social-justice demonstrators in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

"Outside agitators" were in the house! Like Prater, we'd been struck by the oddness of the adoption of that heavily fraught old term.

(For the record, we'd been struck by the way the term was being used by journalists, principally by the Morning Joe team.)

According to Mayor Adams, "outside agitators" had been in the house! In our view, that term has a terrible, murder-soaked history. It ought to be laid to rest.

In our view, Prater's aim was true concerning the use of that term. That said, Prater was mainly examining a different question:

How many people who got arrested at Columbia weren't affiliated with the university?

Prater seemed to be a hard sceptic concerning the NYPD's claims. In her updated report, she said the NYPD had been refusing to offer specific numbers, even as she linked to sites where something resembling specific numbers seemed to be provided.

Say you want a revolution? These complaints about the lack of specifics struck as an unfortunate brand of weak Blue American tea. That said, no one has played the fool concerning this question in quite the way the New York Times has.

In this morning's print editions, the Times offers a profile of a veteran organizer who played a role in the takeover of Columbia's Hamilton Hall. Along the way, headline included, the Times report says this:

The 63-Year-Old Career Activist Among the Protesters at Columbia

Among the throng of Columbia University student protesters gathered outside Hamilton Hall on campus early Tuesday morning was a gray-haired woman in her 60s.

In a video captured by The New York Times, the protesters can be seen trying to push their way toward the building as the woman—decades older than the crowd—pleads with two young counterprotesters trying to block them from barricading the occupied building.

“This is ridiculous,” the woman says, as the men stand with their backs against the doors, apparently trying to keep protesters away from the building. “We’re trying to end a genocide in Gaza.”

The woman at the center of this encounter on the night protesters stormed and then occupied the building was Lisa Fithian, a longtime activist and trainer for left-wing protesters whom the Police Department would later publicly describe as a “confirmed professional agitator.”

[...]

City and university officials have not said how many of the protesters arrested were not affiliated with the school.

Linda Fithian wasn't present during the arrests and she wasn't arrested. That said:

According to the New York Times, "city and university officials haven't said how many" of the people arrested "were not affiliated with the school."

It seems to us that various police officials actually have offered some such numbers. That said, someone else has called this particular roll. 

We refer to the New York Times! Yesterday, the New York Times called the roll concerning this question in this online news report:

Outsiders Were Among Columbia Protesters, but They Dispute Instigating Clashes

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier.

Yesterday, the Times reported that "nearly three dozen" of the people arrested "lacked ties to the university." As of today, a reader could almost get the impression that no one has any idea.

For what it's worth, yesterday's head count wasn't the first attempt by the Times to address this knotty question. On Thursday, the Times had published a report which nailed the numbers down in the following way:

Locks, Chains, Diversions: How Columbia Students Seized Hamilton Hall

[...]

Most of those arrested on and around Columbia’s campus appeared to be graduate students, undergraduates or people otherwise affiliated with the school, according to a Police Department list of people who were arrested that night that was obtained by The Times.

At least a few, however, appeared to have no connection to the university, according to The Times’s review of the list. One was a 40-year-old man who had been arrested at anti-government protests around the country, according to a different internal police document. His role in the organization of the protest is still unclear.

[...]

On the list of protesters arrested at or near Columbia were a handful of people without clear ties to the university, including one man who apparently lives in the neighborhood and who was arrested outside, and a woman who describes herself online as a “poet and farmer” who went to college in Vermont.

According to that Times report, the number of arrestees who weren't affiliated with Columbia was either "a handful" or "at least a few." The Times knew that because they'd reviewed a Police Department list.

(How many arrestees were affiliated? According to the Times, the specific number was "most.")

Yesterday, the Times reported that the actual number of unaffiliated arrestees is "nearly three dozen." (On Thursday morning's Morning Joe, we saw the NYPD's John Chell set the number of outsiders arrested at Columbia at 30-35.)

Today, the Times may give readers the impression that the actual number remains unknown. There's no mention of yesterday's report that the actual number is "nearly three dozen." 

There's no mention of the paper's earlier claim that the actual number was "a handful," and there's no mention of the ongoing claim that police officials haven't been willing to say.

This is the way the game is played by our brightest Blue Tribe newspaper. In fairness, the official organs of Red America are sometimes even worse. 

We agree with Prater about the use of that noxious, blood-soaked term. That said, she hasn't updated her  own claim about the NYPD's refusal to offer numbers or to back up its assertions.

How many outsiders got arrested? What role had they played in these events? We're not entirely sure, but it sounds like the number may have been 30-35!

Meanwhile, at the New York Times, does anyone know what anyone else is saying? It's a bit like with New England weather:

If you don't like the New York Times' numbers, you can just wait a while.