Orange County Prosecutors Charge 10 UC Irvine Protestors With Misdemeanors

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office charged 10 protesters for failing to disperse from a May 2024 protest on the University of California, Irvine campus on Wednesday, with the remaining 40 arrested that day currently being reviewed for charges.

Throughout April and May of last year, Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments swept through California. This resulted in mass arrests on many campuses, including 210 being arrested at a protest at UCLA and 93 at USC. The University of California, Irvine (UCI) was no exception. On May 15th, many students began going into the nearby Physical Sciences Lecture Hall and began barricading themselves inside. After that, the university immediately called in campus police, as well as officers from the Irvine Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and a few other local law enforcement agencies, and stormed in within a few hours. Before going in, the University announced that anyone in buildings in the vicinity of the protests and encampment should leave the area, hinting at a large police action about to take place.

Hours later, Police swiftly moved in, broke up the protest, retook the building, and subsequently razed the encampment. In total, 50 protesters were arrested. For the next four months, those protesters were in limbo, awaiting formal charges. Meanwhile, protests quieted down. Many new University rules and a greater willingness by Universities to both prosecute and give more punishments, like suspensions and removal from campus housing and jobs, nullified many protests, with others being more strictly organized around university rules. However, protesters who had been arrested, many of them students, still did not know what was going to happen to them legally.

Ten UCI Protestors Charged for Failing to Disperse After Police Deemed Campus Protest an Unlawful Assembly

Full Press Release: https://t.co/HffJK22EoN

SANTA ANA, Calif. – Ten protestors have been charged today for failing to disperse after University of California, Irvine… pic.twitter.com/xtjNwAZ7CL

— OCDA Todd Spitzer (@OCDAToddSpitzer) September 18, 2024

This changed for 10 of the 50 UCI protesters on Wednesday, with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office formally  charging them on misdemeanor charges. According to the office’s statement, “Ten protestors have been charged today for failing to disperse after University of California, Irvine police deemed a May 15, 2024, protest on the school’s campus to be an unlawful assembly and ordered the hundreds of protestors to leave. Orange County District Attorney prosecutors are reviewing evidence against the remaining 40 people who were arrested by police after dispersal orders were issued.

“All ten defendants have been sent an arraignment letter with orders to appear at the Central Justice Center on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, to be arraigned on their respective charges. Today’s charged defendants include two UCI professors and four UCI students.”

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer added that “The right to peaceful assembly is a constitutional right and we encourage protestors to exercise their right to peaceful assembly on any issue. However, criminal activity which transcends peaceful assembly will not be tolerated. As such, the Orange County District Attorney’s Special Prosecutions Unit has spent months reviewing evidence to determine what, if any, crimes were committed by protestors at UCI following the lawful dispersal order issued by UCI police. Accordingly, we have filed criminal charges against 10 individuals who failed to disperse from the May 15, 2024, protest and my prosecutors are continuing to review evidence against the remaining 40 arrestees.”

While many Universities still have hundreds of protesters to go through, including 40 more at UCI alone, the charges on Wednesday have been seen as a growing movement to prosecute those arrested at protests earlier this year.

“Globally, people have just had it with protesters and have been more willing to prosecute,” said researcher Sandy Crane, who studies college protest movements, to the Globe on Wednesday. “Look what happened in the UK earlier this year, where climate protesters who blocked a highway got four years in prison. And now look at Irvine. Fifteen years ago during the Occupy protests, no one would have imagined being charged in court. But look what happened now. 10 of them are facing misdemeanors. All of them for at least failure to disperse at scene of riot, but we have a few resisting charges in there too.

“I think everyone understands that this was important to them and that they have a right to protest. But look at how out of control they all got. And now they are facing consequences for their actions. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And this is just the start. We’ll see a lot more of these cases. Irvine wasn’t the first with protesters being prosecuted, and it is by no means the last.”

Evidence is currently being reviewed against the other 40 protesters arrested at UC Irvine.