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Columbia University Adds 36 New Campus Patrol Officers with Powers of Arrest
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
The 36 new special patrol officers announced last month by Columbia University were appointed by the New York Police Department and will be subject to the orders of the police commissioner, a Columbia spokesperson confirmed this week.
Columbia’s leaders applied to the city’s police commissioner for peace officers last year after they had twice called in NYPD to arrest anti-Israel student protesters who had set up an unauthorized tent encampment on a campus lawn last spring and barricaded themselves inside an academic building.
Columbia spokesperson Samantha Slater said the new officers had gone through the NYPD’s application process under New York state’s Peace Officers law, which allows individuals and corporations to apply to the NYPD commissioner to appoint their employees as special patrol officers. If approved, the appointed officers acquire the same powers of arrest and to use physical force as police officers.
“These laws give Columbia the authority to have Special Patrol officers, with the police commissioner’s appointment,” Slater wrote in an email in response to Reuters’ queries. “Columbia has individuals that meet the other requirements in the law such as a lengthy training program and have gone through the NYPD’s application process.”
She said the special patrol officers were authorized under the New York City administrative code that states they will “be subject to the orders of the commissioner and shall obey the rules and regulations of the department and conform to its general discipline.”
Under city law, Columbia pays for the training and the salaries of the officers appointed by NYPD, and they remain Columbia employees. But they will also “possess all the powers and discharge all the duties” of regular NYPD patrol officers. The Columbia officers must report any summonses they issue and bring anyone they arrest to the local NYPD precinct.
People they arrest will be detained and processed in an office on a Columbia campus about 20 blocks uptown from the main Manhattan campus until they can be handed over to the precinct, Columbia said.
After publication of this article, Slater, the Columbia spokesperson, disputed the characterization of the laws and emphasized that the officers were employees of Columbia.
“They are hired, selected, employed, and funded by Columbia,” Slater wrote in an email.
Reuters could not independently establish full details of how Columbia’s officers have gone through the hiring and NYPD appointment process.
A spokesperson for the NYPD said the patrol officers would be unarmed, but declined to respond to other questions. The new officers must complete 162 hours of state-certified training, Columbia said, and under the law be sworn in by the police commissioner. They will then be able to patrol Columbia’s privately owned buildings and gated plazas and lawns, which regular NYPD officers are generally not able to do.
Last spring, Columbia became the epicenter of an anti-Israel student protest movement that has roiled campuses around the world, drawing criticism from both Democratic and Republican politicians, donors and some students and faculty.
Columbia’s board of trustees and the 111 students, staff and alumni who make up the University Senate have frequently been at odds over the best way to handle the protests.
The board of trustees appointed its co-chair, Claire Shipman, as interim university president last week.
Columbia’s new officers have the same powers of warrantless search and arrest as any other police officer under New York’s peace officer law. The state law permits the officers to use “physical force and deadly physical force in making an arrest or preventing an escape.”
Slater said that the officers will work with the university’s public safety office, but – unlike Columbia’s 117 civilian safety employees – will have powers to “remove individuals from campus, issue citations and make arrests, if necessary and appropriate.”
The plan was underway months before US President Donald Trump returned to the White House. His administration, citing what it described as antisemitic harassment on and near the campus, demanded last month that Columbia tighten its protest rules or permanently lose federal funding. One of the nine demands was that the school deploy peace officers with arrest powers.
This week, Columbia’s Office of Public Safety updated its website to say the new officers will allow Columbia “to respond more effectively and promptly to campus disruptions, while reducing our reliance on the NYPD.”
Members of the Senate, the rule-making body that shares university governance with the trustees, said the trustees and president’s office had informed them Columbia was seeking to recruit peace officers, but has not told them that NYPD has any involvement in the patrol officers they have hired.
Dr. Jeanine D’Armiento, a professor of medicine and the chair of the Senate’s executive committee, and two other senators who asked not to be named, told Reuters that the president’s office had repeatedly declined to tell them who in New York’s government was authorizing the officers.
Columbia’s Slater said the university was complying with all its bylaws and in the post-publication letter said “the fact that Columbia was looking to expand its safety team with peace officers has not been a secret.”
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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