Good! UC-Berkeley Sued for Not Intervening in Violent UC-Berkeley Riots

Four  residents in my home state of California are my new heroes.  They recently filed a lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley (and the city) for failing to protect them during the horrible riots last year.

You may recall that when Milo Yiannopoulos came to campus to speak, all hell broke loose.  Apparently the campus, which claims to be the birthplace of the free speech movement (though I suspect Philadelphia might more accurately make that claim), decided to turn its back on its heritage.

FreedomX law group filed the suit on behalf of the four people who sustained injuries during the riots.  According to their filing, the University of California Police Department was “responsible for creating and exposing the plaintiffs to the unlawful actions of an angry mob of violent anarchists.”

Which is undoubtedly true.

We can’t let mobs determine the limits of free speech.  It’s unAmerican.  Campus Reform has more:

“By their failure to intervene or employ reasonable tactical methods to ensure the safety of the plaintiffs and the public, government actors conducted their official duties with deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ safety, permitting hordes of violent rioters to swarm the university campus in a violent rage,” the lawsuit contends.

Additionally, the suit claims that UCPD violated its own “Crowd Management Policy” by failing to remove disruptive attendees from the February 2017 riots, instead choosing to stand down in the face of violent protesters.

“Why do we need a police department then? That’s like a fire department standing there in the street with their hoses saying ‘I’m not going in there, I might get hurt,’” FreedomX President Bill Becker told Campus Reform.

“The Yiannopoulos protests are an example of the new normal on college campuses with the growth of these anarchist/anti-fascist groups,” he continued. “It’s particularly noticeable at Berkeley, which has a long history of anarchy and resistance to conservative visitors.”

Exactly. I hope these four people get paid handsomely for the injuries they sustained from the government being unwilling to protect our basic rights.

Hat Tip: Campus Reform

Image Credit: By Pax Ahimsa Gethen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons