Police on campus at Columbia and UCLA as protests disrupt colleges nationwide: Live updates

Jeffrey Maddrey, NYPD’s chief of department, said the agency did not anticipate the escalation in campus protests on Tuesday and had to quickly put a plan together after law enforcement received a request from Columbia University.

“We had to figure out how we were going to deal with what was going on in the street, which was the first part of the plan, because we had to be able to move, we had to be able to bring the barricade in, we had to make sure we had a clear passage for the buses once we had the arrested individuals on buses,” Maddrey said.

“In this case, we had to breach a very difficult building, a building that we knew doors were fortified with vending machines, couches, metal chairs, and the students and the people who are in the building were pushing against the building and throwing objects ” at the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit, Maddrey continued.

Mayor Eric Adams said during Wednesday’s news conference there have been ongoing conversations between the NYPD and all universities in the city “once we picked up from our intelligence that there was a real desire to start taking over buildings and a desire to escalate what was happening already .��

“We spoke with the institutions and told them ‘we’re here when you need us, we’re going to pivot quickly.’ And I think it was clear from the combination of what intel was able to share and the observations that to schools were making, that the decision was made — as a Chief Maddrey stated – that this was a last-minute call,” the mayor continued .