District Attorney files criminal charges against 19 students who Pomona President called riot police on

In a July 15 arraignment hearing, the Los Angeles County District Attorney charged 19 Claremont students with criminal trespassing for participating in a divestment sit-in on April 5, during which Pomona President Gabi Starr called riot police to arrest the students.

The DA dropped charges against the one other student who police arrested in the crowd outside Alexander Hall on April 5, for alleged obstruction of justice.

Because the charges were a “first offense” for all 19 students, the DA offered a diversion program, which would result in the charges being sealed if the students do not get arrested again within six months and complete 16 community service hours. The students are scheduled to appear again in court to accept the deal, or enter a plea, on Aug. 23.

The students are being represented pro-bono by organizer and attorney Jaime Guttierez, who appeared in court for the students.

On June 3, before the Claremont 19’s first court appearance, Pomona Divest from Apartheid urged community members in an Instagram post to call administrators and demand that they drop the charges. Because Pomona College is the alleged victim of trespassing, the DA would most likely drop the trespassing charges if Starr requested it, Guttierez said.

By letting the DA file charges, “Pomona is trying to set multiple dangerous precedents of deploying riot police on students and now refusing to drop a criminal case against them,” PDfA said in a July 22 Instagram post. “We know that this will impact generations of community organizers and funnel more people into the systemically racist carceral system.”

Starr’s April 5 police raid in context

The arrests and criminal charges against the Claremont 19 are part of a wave of over 3,000 student and community member arrests at Palestine solidarity protests around the country since Oct. 7, 2023. In many cases, college administrators authorized police to make arrests using violent crowd control weapons. At UCLA, police shot at least five students in the head with rubber bullets and fired stun grenades into a student solidarity encampment while sweeping it, just a day after Zionists launched fireworks into the encampment with no police or campus safety interference. At Columbia, student media reported that NYPD “slammed [students] with metal barricades,” and one officer “accidentally” fired a live round inside an occupied building.

The 19 students now facing trespassing charges participated a sit-in in Starr’s office on April 5 to demand divestment, after Pomona forcibly removed most of a student Mock Apartheid Wall and solidarity encampment earlier in the day.

Within two hours, Starr called riot police to arrest the students, triggering a five-department response that saw 26 police vehicles lock down the blocks surrounding Alexander Hall. Multiple police officers, including one who entered Alexander Hall, appeared to be carrying high-caliber crowd control weapons, but did not fire them.

Starr allegedly told faculty in the following days that the police response was pre-planned. A PDfA public records request confirmed that Pomona administrators had met with the Claremont Police Department Chief on April 3 to plan a “protest intervention.”

Starr also immediately suspended the seven participating Pomona students and banned all arrested students from Pomona’s campus. At the request of Claremont Campus Safety Director Mike Hallinan, a former LA Sheriff’s Deputy and Police Department officer, CPD held several students in jail until after midnight on April 5 so that Hallinan could hand them their suspension and campus ban letters in jail.

On June 26, Gutierrez sent a letter to Starr notifying her that the DA had filed charges, urging her to drop the charges. “From challenging racial discrimination at lunch counters in Greensboro, to farmworkers in California’s Central Valley contesting illegal injunctions, to Rosa Park’s pivotal stand, refusing to move to the back of the bus — civil disobedience has been a righteous, non-violent tool. This line of righteous indignation continues through your students.” As of July 27, Starr has not replied to the letter.

Brown University dropped criminal charges against 20 Jewish students who staged a sit-in for divestment on November 8 following the shooting of three Palestinian college students, including Hisham Awartani Brown ’25. In some cases, prosecutors have dropped criminal cases against student protesters. A month later, Brown refused to drop charges against 41 students – stating it would be a “mistake” to drop charges – who staged another sit-in for divestment in the same building. On May 14, a Providence judge issued a not guilty filing for all the students. 

On June 20, New York City prosecutors announced that they were declining to pursue charges against Columbia students who occupied a campus building and renamed it “Hind’s Hall,” after the six year old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who a Zionist regime sniper killed on January 29.

Gutierrez called his clients’ participation in the April 5 sit-in “righteous.”

“They put their lives, their careers, their education to fight genocide,” Guiterrez said. 

PDfA’s July 22 Instagram post also included calls for community members to donate to the Peoples Fund, a new Claremont-based mutual aid organization raising funds for organizers to distribute in Cairo, Sudan, and Congo.