Internal emails, leaked recordings, and interviews at six universities reveal a pattern of misinformation targeting pro-Palestinian student encampments before and after crackdowns
As Katy Anderson drove home from campus that night, she kept checking over her shoulder. Each time she made a turn—six times in total, she remembers counting—two police vans trailing behind her turned as well.
“They followed me all the way until I reached my parking lot at the back alley of my apartment building,” said Anderson, a journalist and PhD student at the University of Calgary.
Earlier that night, she was among several students and community members injured in a police crackdown that, at the behest of the University of Calgary, dismantled a pro-Palestine encampment set up the same day on the campus.
Anderson suffered a concussion, having been hit over the head with police shields, as well as being kicked, pepper sprayed, and stunned by a flash bang grenade that landed next to her.
The day after, U of Calgary president Ed McCauley wrote in a statement that “the police report no injuries.”
Three weeks later, Calgary Police Chief Mark Neufeld told a police commission hearing that he still couldn’t answer questions about injuries that night. The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team—made up of police and “civilian investigators”—was investigating, he said, whether “social media accounts and reporting of serious injury…are, in fact, accurate.”
While the raid in Calgary was one of the most dramatic, the whirlwind of unfounded allegations and police violence that student protestors experienced there played out similarly across the country. It was part of a pattern in responses to encampments, according to interviews The Breach conducted with more than 20 students and organizers from six pro-Palestine encampments. (more...)
Universities, police spread ‘jaw-dropping’ misinformation about encampments
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