NYPD’s references to ‘outside agitators’ at student protests spark criticism

May 5 (UPI) -- The New York Police Department has been criticized for its messaging related to student protests gripping college campuses across the nation as top brass share politically biased posts online.

The NYPD released a joint press release by email with Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday in which it outlined how 29% of the 112 people arrested at Columbia University and 60% of 170 people arrested at City College of New York on April 30 were not affiliated with the schools.

"Since Tuesday night's arrests, the NYPD has been investigating which individuals were affiliated with different schools and which were not," the statement reads. It was not immediately clear if the NYPD is tracking such "outside agitators" among pro-Israel counterprotesters.

Now, critics are calling attention to the NYPD's narrative about so-called "outside agitators" and the discharge of a firearm by an officer on the campus.

The department did not respond to questions for comment by press time, specifically questioning the NYPD's intent on releasing the statistics, if the department would have reacted differently if the protests only involved students, and related inquiries.

Meanwhile, the phrase "outside agitator" carries bias and doesn't accurately reflect what's happening on the ground. For example, some schools have been quick to shut down student demonstrations. It's possible that students who would have participated in such demonstrations ended up on Columbia's campus as an "outside agitator."

And the department hasn't answered whether outside agitators behaved with any more alleged "violence" than students at the schools, all amounting to what some have categorized as an attempt by pro-Israel authorities to delegitimize the protests.

"Who is funding this? What is happening? There is an unknown entity who is radicalizing our vulnerable students. Taking advantage of their young minds," NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell posted on social media Saturday from his official account.

"As parents and Americans we must demand some answers! I can't speak for the rest of America, but in NYC we won't rest until we find out! We will broadcast what we see and find. We will use the might of our Intelligence Bureau and our Federal partners to quite simply connect the dots. Follow the money!!!!!!"

Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Doughtry was filmed spreading the narrative that "somebody is radicalizing our students," even as he claimed on his social media account that police protect "everyone's right to free speech and peaceful protest."

Writing in the New York Daily News, reporter Graham Rayman questioned whether the NYPD has become too political with its messaging. He pointed to how the NYPD raised an American flag after arresting pro-Palestinian students at City College.

"They are supposed to be public servants, they are supposed to remain neutral, and this kind of politicking is inappropriate for police executives," Jennvine Wong, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, told Rayman.

Rayman pointed to how, under the city charter, officials are prohibited from using official social media handles to make overtly political commentary, similar to the federal Hatch Act.

And Leonard Greene, another reporter for the Daily News, noted in an op-ed Sunday that the NYPD's messaging has been "irresponsible and fiery" as he called the narrative of the "outside agitator" as loaded and painful language from the Civil Rights movement.

Martin Luther King, for example, was "smeared" with the label of outside agitator during marches in Birmingham and other cities, Greene noted. Meanwhile, The Nation noted that the phrase has roots as far back as the 1940s when it was first said by John Birchers and Jim Crow police officers to slander Black activists.

"We know the terminology 'outside agitator' was used during the civil rights movement when people attempted to show that the movement was not legitimate," Adams has said, according to Greene. "So we understand that."

Yet the mayor and his police department have continued to use the terminology and push the narrative of "outside agitators," spread in the media by the likes of the Daily News' conservative crosstown rival.