Kenyon: Riot gear at Dartmouth is the year’s lasting image
Published: 12-27-2024 6:31 PM
Modified: 12-28-2024 6:43 PM |
When looking back at 2024, I can’t get past the scene that unfolded on the Dartmouth Green after dark on May 1st.
I stared in disbelief as 20 New Hampshire police officers — in full riot gear — marched in military-style formation toward a few hundred peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters and bystanders. Dozens of cops from Upper Valley communities and Dartmouth security officers served as reinforcements to the storm troopers.
A young Boston Globe reporter asked me, “Are we safe?”
I couldn’t say for sure.
Before the night was over, 89 people, including 65 Dartmouth students, were arrested for criminal trespass. During their arrests, some were planted face-down on the ground. They were all handcuffed and hauled off in Dartmouth Outing Club vans to area police stations, held for several hours before regaining their freedom.
With their cases too flimsy to waste a judge’s time and taxpayers’ money, police prosecutor Mariana Pastore opted over the next few months not to file charges against 34 of the arrestees. The remaining 55 cases also lacked merit, but Pastore couldn’t allow cops’ efforts go for naught. (Apparently, the overtime pay they racked up wasn’t a reward enough for a night’s work.)
Pastore reduced the misdemeanor charges to violations, but that didn’t undo the damage already done. Having an arrest record could prove problematic for some students when applying to graduate schools or jobs. In some business and academic sectors today, merely having your name associated with a pro-Palestinian demonstration is a black mark.
We can thank Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock for the mess. She invited police onto campus to strong arm nonviolent demonstrators and others looking on.
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I imagine Beilock couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome. For cracking down on even the tamest acts of civil disobedience, she’s won the approval of conservative elites on the Dartmouth campus and beyond. (In October 2023, she had two peaceful student activists arrested for pitching a tent on the lawn outside her office.)
I keep waiting for a Beilock selfie to show up on the college’s website of her arm in arm with the staff of the Dartmouth Review.
On May 1, less than a year into her presidency, Beilock managed to turn a serene patch of grass, where the public felt welcome, into a militarized zone.
As a kid growing up in a neighborhood near downtown Hanover, Andrew Tefft frequently hung out on the Green with friends, but in the months following May found himself banned from the space.
Tefft, 46, wasn’t part of the demonstration meant to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war and Dartmouth’s investment policies that benefit the Israeli military.
While in town visiting his elderly dad, Tefft wandered over to the Green that fateful spring night to check out what the commotion was about. He arrived after state police had ordered people to leave.
When Tefft didn’t immediately obey police commands, he drew the ire of a young Canaan officer. After obtaining the Canaan police video under the New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know law, it was clear to me that the cop overreacted.
But that didn’t matter in the prosecutor’s eyes. Of the 89 people taken into police custody, Tefft was the only one charged with resisting arrest.
During his encounter with police, Tefft suffered an upper body injury. He spent the next morning at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s emergency room.
On Monday, Tefft appeared in Lebanon District Court with Upper Valley attorney Charlie Buttrey, who represented him pro bono
Under a plea agreement, Tefft was sentenced to 10 days in jail, all of which was deferred. As long as he stays out of trouble for the next year, Tefft, who didn’t have a previous criminal record, won’t land behind bars.
“It was the best outcome under the circumstances,” Buttrey told me after the hearing.
The deferred jail sentence allowed Pastore to show Upper Valley cops that she’s on their side, even when they’re overzealous. She declined to comment on the plea deal.
I also reached out to Canaan Police Chief Ryan Porter. “This situation has been very unfortunate for everyone, and it’s important to acknowledge that,” he emailed. “Allowing the legal process to play out was essential, and I believe a fair resolution was reached.”
I doubt Tefft sees it the same way. He continues to seek treatment for a broken bone in his upper arm.
“It’s been a hard year, mentally and physically,” Tefft told me. “That’s the reason I wanted to get this criminal case over with.”
It’s not yet over for two Upper Valley residents. Christian Harris and his partner, Julianne Borger, have pleaded not guilty to criminal trespass. Kira Kelley, a 2011 Hanover High graduate, is representing them pro bono.
Harris, 33, and Borger, 25, are the only two who rejected Pastore’s offer of placing their cases on file “without finding,” which meant giving up their right to a trial in exchange for the charge going away providing they not run afoul of the law for several months.
“We’re two little fishes, but we don’t want to let Dartmouth totally get away with what it did,” said Harris, a 2009 Hanover High graduate who now works for Vermont Legal Aid.
“Dartmouth overstepped,” Harris argued, when it called in police to arrest people for “singing songs and holding hands.”
A joint trial, which likely won’t start until February, could force Beilock to take the witness stand to explain why she handed her campus over to riot police.
Good for Harris and Borger for holding strong.
More power to them.
Jim Kenyon can be re ached at jkenyon@vnews.com.