University police at UC Riverside are asking people who participated in the large-scale protest outside of the UC Board of Regents meeting on Jan. 19 to make a report if they felt they were badly treated, officials said.
Police fired plastic pellets into the crowd at one point, said Kris Lovekin, spokeswoman for UCR’s UCPD, on Wednesday. UCPD is currently gathering information for protesters who were injured, she said.
Standing behind a barrier, police threatened to arrest at least seven times over a microphone. People were trying to get through police lines, using wooden signs, Lovekin said. Protesters also picked up metal barricades, which they used to block entrances and exits, she said.
Police considered these actions aggressive and determined the pellets were a necessary amount of force to protect people trying to get in and out of the meeting, Lovekin said.
Video footage of the events was posted on YouTube.
Kyle Todd, a third-year law student who was at the Riverside protests, said he doesn’t think the amount of force used by the police was necessary. He said he did not see students using the barricades against the police, but rather as a place to hide behind during the protests.
Todd said he thinks filing a report to the UCPD is an ineffective method of addressing any perceived maltreatment in the protests, and he would prefer to see litigation taken against the police.
“(The police) used violence against students, not just as crowd control … but as a form of intimidation,” Todd said.
The small, hard plastic pellets sting like a paintball pellet, Lovekin said. She was not aware of any other time pellets have been used on Riverside’s campus, but said it is unusual for the campus to have a protest of that size.
Eleven protesters were originally reported to have been injured by the pellets, but Lovekin said she now thinks it is a smaller number.
Nine officers were reported bruised in the protests, she said.
Two people were arrested in the course of the meeting. They have been identified as Kenneth Ehrlich, a lecturer in the art department at UC Riverside, and Humberto Rivera, a 25-year-old from Corona, Lovekin said.
Compiled by Kylie Reynolds, Bruin senior staff.