Few among hundreds of campus protesters in L.A. facing charges, reigniting debate
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When pro-Palestinian protesters erected encampments at two of Los Angeles’ most prominent college campuses last year, the weeks-long demonstrations ended in dozens of arrests at USC and hundreds more at UCLA after a violent overnight attack by counterprotesters.
Law enforcement officials promised swift action against those who broke the law. But late last month, Los Angeles City. Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto announced that only two people — out of nearly 350 people arrested — would face criminal charges from her office.
Feldstein Soto’s decision not to charge in all but a handful of cases has reignited debate about how the protests were handled and left some campus officials wondering whether future agitators will be emboldened.
Protests across the U.S. — including one in Westwood — drew attention to President Trump’s cutting of billions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health.
In the year since the dramatic scenes on both campuses, Jewish groups and the Trump administration have accused USC and UCLA of tolerating antisemitism, and Jewish individuals have sued UCLA and pro-Palestinian groups. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, meanwhile, have sued UCLA three times, claiming it failed to protect them from a violent mob that attacked their encampment last May.
In charging only two suspects, the city attorney has frustrated campus officials, law enforcement leaders and demonstrators, who were on opposite sides of a skirmish line last year, for different reasons, with some alleging she has shown bias against pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto did not respond to a question about those allegations. In a previous statement about the charges, Feldstein Soto thanked prosecutors in her office “for their dedication to the rule of law and their commitment to objectively evaluating the evidence and referrals received on each of these matters.”
Most serious violent crimes are handled by the L.A. County district attorney’s office, with lesser charges referred to the city attorney for review.
Feldstein Soto declined to charge 338 protesters arrested by Los Angeles and University of California police on both campuses on suspicion of failing to disperse, trespassing and conspiracy to trespass.
In a statement issued last month, her office said it rejected most of those cases for lack of evidence or because a university had shown “failure or inability to assist in identification or other information needed for prosecution.”
Her office reviewed nine other cases of people accused of resisting arrest, obstruction, disturbing the peace, battery, vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon. Four of those cases did not result in charges and three were referred to a city attorney hearing, essentially a diversionary process that often ends without the filing of charges.
That left two men facing misdemeanor offenses, both related to violence near UCLA.
The incident at the center of the cases unfolded after days of complaints from some UCLA faculty and students that a protest encampment was blocking free movement on campus and leading to the harassment of Jewish students. On the night of May 1, 2024, a group of pro-Israel demonstrators attacked, triggering mayhem.
As incendiary claims ricocheted across group chats and were amplified online, a crowd converged on UCLA and violence ignited when police left the scene.
Dozens of people were involved in the violent incident, and videos showed assailants dragging pro-Palestinian demonstrators to the ground, beating people with weapons, hurling items at the encampment and, in one case, pepper-spraying a journalist in the face.
Though several people were involved in the violence, Feldstein Soto charged only Edan On, 19, who is now believed to be in Israel.
On was first identified by CNN last year. Multiple videos showed him in a white hoodie and face mask wildly swinging a pipe at demonstrators.
University police initially asked the L.A. County district attorney’s office to bring felony charges against On, but prosecutors declined, citing his age, the minimal injuries suffered by his victim and his lack of a criminal record, according to court documents. Still, prosecutors referred his case to Feldstein Soto for misdemeanor charges.
Feldstein Soto last month charged On with battery and exhibiting a deadly weapon, records show. He is due in court in late May. On’s attorney declined to comment.
Last month, independent journalist Eric Levai published photos that purported to show On standing outside an Israel Defense Forces recruitment center near Tel Aviv. Levai also highlighted a TikTok post, purportedly from On, showing him in IDF fatigues.
A city attorney’s office spokesman didn’t respond to questions about On’s whereabouts. The IDF did not respond to multiple inquiries; On’s attorney declined to comment on this issue. Last year, court records show, On successfully petitioned a judge to return his Israeli passport, which had been seized after his arrest. His attorney argued in court filings that On was not a flight risk.
A second defendant, 31-year-old Matthew Katz, was charged with battery, false imprisonment and resisting arrest related to conduct near UCLA on April 30, 2024, records show.
Attorney Sabrina Darwish denied the allegations against Katz, whom she described as a “peaceful participant” who was demonstrating in support of Palestinians. Darwish said in an email to The Times that the charges “lack both legal merit and evidentiary support.”
UCLA failed to stem a violent protest melee last spring, as a “highly chaotic” decision-making process, lack of communication between administrators and police and a shortage of campus safety personnel led to institutional paralysis, according to a University of California independent review.
“Mr. Katz is the only protester charged from the pro-Palestinian encampment, which resulted in over 200 arrests last year,” Darwish said. “The decision to prosecute appears to be an overreach influenced more by public pressure than by the rule of law.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators say Feldstein Soto has failed to hold the group that attacked the UCLA encampment accountable. A lawsuit filed in March against UCLA and police agencies identified an additional 20 individuals allegedly responsible for violence.
“There’s overwhelming evidence of over four hours of assaults and batteries on these kids,” said one UCLA encampment demonstrator, who asked to be identified only as “Huey,” for fear of reprisals. “The city sat back and watched as these people were brutally attacked.”
One person accused of attacking the encampment was charged with felonies by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office last year. Prosecutors accused Malachi Marlanlibrett of assault with a deadly weapon and battery with a hate crime enhancement, according to court records. A district attorney’s office spokesman declined to comment on the reason prosecutors pursued a hate crime. Marlanlibrett’s attorney didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Another man, Noel Padilla, was charged with resisting arrest and battery, records show. Both men are due back in court this week. It was not clear which side of the clash Padilla was on. Natalin Daldalian, a spokeswoman for the L.A. County public defender’s office, said Padilla had been granted pretrial diversion but declined to comment further.
Indignation has followed Feldstein Soto’s claim that charges had to be dismissed in hundreds of other cases because of campus officials’ “failure or inability to assist in identification.”
The head of the union that represents the UCLA Police Department officers assailed Feldstein Soto’s assertion as “flat out false” and accused her of refusing to charge for “political reasons.”
After a February protest at a University of California regent’s home that was vandalized, UCLA has recommended an indefinite suspension of a Students for Justice in Palestine group and a four-year-ban of a similar graduate student organization.
The union official, UC Officer Wade Stern, noted that campus police presented similar evidence against protesters at UC Irvine last year, which prompted Orange County prosecutors to file dozens of misdemeanor charges for failure to disperse.
UC Regent Jay Sures, who said he was briefed on the information police presented to the city, accused Feldstein Soto of ignoring evidence that clearly identified people suspected of wrongdoing.
“She issued a blanket dismissal,” Sures said. He called the decision a “travesty of justice” that sends a “terrible message to her law enforcement partners.”
Spokesman Ivor Pine said the city attorney’s office “received full cooperation from UCPD based on the information available to them and to us, and we did not mean to suggest otherwise.”
Further explaining the dropped charges, Pine said, cases were presented “without sufficient information to establish the elements of a crime as to any individual.”
Judea Pearl, an Israeli American UCLA computer professor and vocal supporter of Israel, said the decision not to charge “tells students that there are no consequences to these actions that broke the law and university rules, that they can just do them again.”
“It will embolden them,” Pearl said.
For years, the city attorney’s office has rarely, if ever, charged protesters with failing to disperse or other nonviolent offenses related to constitutionally protected demonstrations. Such was the case with most arrests that followed President Trump’s first electoral victory in 2016, the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and raucous celebrations after the Dodgers’ 2020 World Series victory.
But last year, Feldstein Soto took a more aggressive stance, filing obstruction charges against 31 Jewish demonstrators who blocked a portion of the 110 Freeway while calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Attorney Colleen Flynn, who represents those demonstrators, called the cases a “glaring exception” to the standard charging policy and showed bias against “people who are protesting for Palestine.”
The city attorney also drew concerns from LAPD officials last year when she personally lobbied for the arrest of a prominent leftist activist she alleged was involved in vandalizing the Brentwood home of the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Detectives said video evidence did not definitively show the activist, Ricci Sergienko of People’s City Council, committing a crime, records show.
The organizers of last year’s campus protests have said their goals were to convince university leaders to divest endowments of connections to weapons companies aiding Israel’s war efforts. The encampments featured many Jewish members but also faced criticism from Jewish communities, which said they were antisemitic and demonized Israel.
The Justice Department is investigating four California universities over possible ‘illegal DEI’ in admissions. The universities say they do not illegally consider race when accepting students.
More than 52,000 Gazans have been killed during Israel’s military campaign, according to Hamas’ Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel that triggered the latest conflict.
At a moment when the Trump administration has targeted pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses, some celebrated Feldstein Soto’s decision not to charge in all but two of the cases as a victory for the 1st Amendment.
Most of those detained last year were simply exercising their right to protest, Amelia Jones, a professor and vice dean of faculty and research at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, wrote in a statement to The Times.
“As a supporter of the students and someone who attended the entirely peaceful protests almost every day, I am thrilled to see this issue resolved, and freedom of speech ratified,” Jones said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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