Cops in Riot Gear Storm Penn Students’ House in Month-Old Vandalism Case

Last Friday, 13 police officers gathered in the early morning hours outside an off-campus residential building in West Philadelphia. It was the home of several University of Pennsylvania students.

Donning their full tactical gear, including riot helmets, and armed with assault rifles and handguns, the police threatened to break down the door with a battering ram and pointed a gun at a neighbor before storming the residence.

The sound of police coming up the stairs woke the students up. As they stepped out of their rooms, police trained guns on them, according to one student present during the raid who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of their personal safety.

Police identified themselves as 12 officers from the University of Pennsylvania Police Department and one from the Philadelphia Police Department, the student said, but refused to provide names, badge numbers, or a warrant. Police seized another student’s personal device and took the student in for questioning. They were released later that morning with no charges or arrests made. 

“I’m pretty concerned that the university is using extreme tactics to try and suppress student movements.”

In the course of questioning, the student was provided with a copy of the warrant for suspicion of vandalism, according to the first student who spoke to The Intercept. The warrant related to an incident in September where red paint was thrown on the Benjamin Franklin statue on campus.

At the time, Penn’s public safety department received a report of an incident and responded. Student activists posted on Instagram that “an autonomous group” was responsible.

“I’m pretty concerned that the university is using extreme tactics to try and suppress student movements. It’s been pretty consistent this entire year,” said state Rep. Rick Krajewski, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia. “A legal warrant is one thing, but the amount of force used for that warrant against young students is extremely alarming.” 

He said, “At the end of the day 12 cops showed up with tactical gear and rifles against kids in a quiet neighborhood. It’s hard for me to believe that was justified, legal or not.”

“The raid on Friday was a clear act of institutional and state-sponsored terror,” the student who was present for the raid told The Intercept. “It comes a year after Penn disciplining students, suspending them, sending 300 riot cops to arrest and brutalize us multiple times over, throwing their own students and community members in jail. This is just another outrageous mark in their timeline of escalation.” 

The way police handled the raid was jarring, said Radhika Sainath, senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. “The disproportionate use of force over a suspected vandalism incident that occurred over a month ago quite honestly shocks the conscience.”

Penn in the Hot Seat

Since the surge of encampments protesting the war on Gaza across the country this spring, Penn has cracked down on Palestine solidarity activism with increasing force. 

The Ivy League school was in the spotlight last winter after university president Liz Magill caved to pressure from pro-Israel donors and resigned after testifying before Congress. In the wake of the hearing, Penn Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok also resigned, along with Harvard University President Claudine Gay. 

Months later, in the spring, Penn called Philadelphia police in to clear the Gaza encampment in the spring. 

Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department, directed questions to Penn and the Philadelphia district attorney. University spokesperson Ron Ozio did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Penn’s Division of Public Safety confirmed the raid but said they do not comment on open criminal investigations. The statement said the warrant was revised by the DA’s office, approved by a bail commissioner, and executed following proper policies and procedures. 

Philadelphia district attorney spokesperson Dustin Slaughter confirmed that the DA approved the warrant for the search based on information provided by Penn police. Asked about student reports that the warrant cited suspicion of vandalism, Slaughter said he could not discuss specifics. 

“On October 16, 2024, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office reviewed and approved a search warrant for a location in West Philadelphia based on information provided to the DAO’s Charging Unit in connection to an ongoing investigation led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Police Department and Public Safety Division,” Slaughter said. 

He said the DA office had no role in the execution of the warrant and had not received any requests from Penn police to approve charges. 

“If and when that time arrives,” Slaughter said, “we will carefully review the evidence submitted by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and make a fair and just determination.”  

Militarized Campus

Penn has one of the largest campus police forces in the country. 

Despite calling in Philadelphia Police to crack down on encampments this spring, the university historically prided itself in keeping city police separate from student affairs. 

These days, the student at the raid said, the police presence at Penn and in West Philadelphia is overwhelming. The raid on Friday was part of an increasing militarization of campus and city police that targets both activism for Palestine and the city’s Black and brown residents. 

“The Penn police and the PPD have long been a repressive force in West Philly,” the student said. “Police violence in Philly is far too present. You go through something like this and can’t help but be reminded of the PPD bombing an entire block in 1985” — referring to the police attack against the radicals of the MOVE commune in West Philadelphia. 

Penn has shown stark imbalances in how it’s responded to activism for Palestine and activism for other causes, the student said. “It’s no surprise that Penn police are trained by the Israeli occupation forces, sponsoring trips to Israel for training and participating in counterterrorism seminars. It’s also no surprise that Penn is funding this genocide and terrorizing their own students,” they said. 

The raid was unprecedented in Penn history, said Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature and member of Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine who organized a Palestine literature festival at Penn that became the subject of attack from university donors last September. 

“As some of us watch with horror the destruction of our homelands and the extermination and displacement of our families in Palestine and Lebanon, UPenn resorts to obscene intimidation tactics to silence anti-genocide speech, going as far as unleashing an armed police force on students in their residence,” she said.

“Not only is the university obstructing students’ and faculty’s ability to teach, learn, and exchange ideas,” she added, “it is also criminalizing grief, shamefully clamping down on students, accusing them of trespassing in their own campus, and threatening them with arrest when they mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by Israel’s genocide in Palestine and now Lebanon.”

“One of Penn’s tactics is to isolate students.”

The aim of the raid was to isolate students and chill further activism in support of Palestine, the student said. 

“One of Penn’s tactics is to isolate students,” they said. “I don’t think they understand anything about how strong and how broad this movement is.”

Retaliation of this sort is a sign that powerbrokers are afraid of the growing international movement organizing against genocide. 

“If you’re shocked by this happening to students in the West, then think about the campaign of violence and terror that the West has been imposing on Palestine for decades,” they said. “They’ve only made all of this more visible.”

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