Denver police Chief Ron Thomas said Friday that he refused Auraria campus officials’ request to clear pro-Palestinian demonstrators from an encampment a second time after police arrested 45 people in a tense sweep of the site last week — and said there is “no legal way” for officers to dismantle the demonstration.
Thomas blamed Auraria campus leaders for mishandling the aftermath of the mass arrests, saying he’d expected the campus to collect demonstrators’ tents to return them at a later time, but that the campus instead left the tents at the site, allowing the protesters to quickly rebuild their Gaza solidarity encampment on the Tivoli Quad.
“And as you might imagine, they just came and re-erected the tents and we were back at square one,” Thomas said. “At which point (Auraria officials) asked us to come back and engage in the operation again. …And I didn’t think it was safe, nor did I think it was appropriate, to go in and do that again. So I shut it down.”
Thomas, who spoke during a regular meeting of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board on Friday morning, went on to say that law enforcement has “no legal way” to clear the pro-Palestine encampment at the campus that serves the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College of Denver.
“While the school would prefer the group leave the area, I just don’t think there is any legal way to do that,” he said. “Well, I know there is no legal way to do that, unless they truly do something that creates an unlawful assembly.”
Thomas added police have no indication the demonstration will soon shift into an unlawful assembly. He said negotiations have been ongoing with the demonstrators since last week to remove the tents, and he continues to speak with Auraria campus leadership about the situation.
“I’ve been explaining to the leadership at (Auraria) that we absolutely aren’t going to just go in and sweep out this peaceful protest just because they are occupying a space on your campus that you’d like to use for something else right now, and because of your fears that maybe this could grow to the point where it interferes with other campus activities,” Thomas said. “I’ve made that pretty clear.”
Auraria campus representatives did not comment on the chief’s position Friday. The campus did release a statement saying officials had met again with the student protesters, and vowed to “continue to support and encourage peaceful debate and civil engagement on our campus while ensuring the safety of our students, employees and visitors.”
The Denver City Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the people arrested at Auraria last week, did not respond to inquires from The Post.
When asked how Denver’s urban camping ban applies or doesn’t apply to the Auraria protesters, Jose Salas, as spokesman for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said the campus and its administrators “have policies to make decisions as to what is allowed” and that the city will keep working with the schools.
Thomas’s approach is an about-face from a week ago, when Denver police officers, Denver sheriff’s deputies and troopers from Colorado State Patrol attempted to dismantle the encampment on April 26. The officers declared that the demonstrators were trespassing because they had erected tents in violation of campus rules prohibiting camping.
Officers arrested 40 people on trespassing charges, and another five people on charges connected to assaulting officers, Thomas said Friday in response to questions from the Citizen Oversight Board members.
“I approved the plan,” Thomas said. “My thought in my mind was it would result in a small number of arrests, if any. And ultimately that didn’t turn out to be the case.”
Chief defends prior mass arrests, use of force
Thomas defended officers’ actions during the April 26 sweep, initially saying there was “no application of force at all” during the arrests. When pressed about officers caught on video shoving demonstrators, he amended his initial statement to say there was “no use of force used to control or arrest someone.”
“If someone got in an officer’s space where they felt they were in danger — ” Thomas said, shrugging slightly. “I know when I was there with the mayor, there were folks who were getting closer than was comfortable for the mayor, so there were efforts to push people back and create that safe distance. In terms of using striking tools, less-lethal (weapons), there was none of that. No punching, kicking, none of that.”
Johnston and Thomas addressed the demonstrators around 7:30 p.m. on April 26, hours after the first wave of arrests, and gave demonstrators 30 minutes to take down their tents or face arrest. However, no additional mass arrests were made that night.
Auraria campus police made “40 of the 45 hands-on arrests for trespassing” in the initial sweep, which happened at around 1 p.m., Thomas said. Denver police officers moved in when the initial officers called for backup.
Some demonstrators tried to “unarrest” fellow demonstrators by cutting off their zip ties or wrestling them from the control of officers, the chief added.
Thomas defended the use of the city’s SWAT team during the response to the protest, and said it is standard procedure to use SWAT and officers on similar teams to respond to protests or special events, because such teams don’t have to regularly answer 911 calls.
The chief also discussed changes to the police department’s approach to crowd control during protests after the agency’s unconstitutional response to the massive demonstrations that swept the city in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The city has been ordered to pay millions of dollars in legal settlements and fines for using excessive force during those demonstrations.
“We’re very clear about the extent of our legal authority and we’re certainly cognizant of the fact we certainly don’t want to engage in anything we could be subsequently sued for and that cost the taxpayers of Denver,” he said.
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