Samad Hakani, Photography Editor

Student protesters campaigning for Yale to divest from weapons manufacturing had spent two nights sleeping in tents on Beinecke Plaza when Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell emailed all of his department’s sworn members at 4:42 p.m. on Sunday, April 21.

The message, with a subject line twice emblazoned with “CONFIDENTIAL,” summarized the past week of protests on the plaza, which the police had “cleared” each evening. On Friday, April 19, however, students had set up over 30 tents on the plaza and refused to vacate the area. Subsequently, Campbell wrote, the administration permitted them to remain there overnight. 

The administration’s initial willingness to let students sleep on the plaza was not unprecedented. On Monday, when organizers installed a pop-up wooden bookcase on the plaza, the administration communicated to student organizers that the structure would be taken down shortly. However, if the students were to “resist” that directive, the shelves would have been allowed to stay up until 11 p.m., according to email communications reviewed by the News.

But by the time Campbell sent his confidential email on Sunday, the situation — and the University’s conciliatory approach — had changed. 

“Following extensive discussions with university leadership,” Campbell wrote, “the decision has been reached to initiate clearance operations of Beinecke Plaza tomorrow.”

Those clearance operations, which began around 6 a.m. on Monday morning, entailed arresting 48 protesters, including 44 Yale students, taking into custody the tents and possessions left behind and closing Beinecke Plaza for nine days.

Nearly 2,000 recently published internal Yale Police Department records — emails, police reports, drone images and screenshots of social media activity — offer new clues to understanding why the University and the YPD carried out the April 22 operation arresting dozens of their own students and bringing national media attention. 

After Israel began its war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, pro-Palestinian students responded with protests, rallies and campaigns on Yale’s campus. 

A partnership of student groups that has since rebranded as the Sumud Coalition commenced a week of action on Monday, April 15, when organizers set up the bookcase and unveiled a “Books not Bombs” campaign calling for Yale to disclose its investments and divest from weapons manufacturers tied to Israel.

Organizers set up a tent encampment on Beinecke Plaza on Friday night, outside of a farewell dinner for then-University President Peter Salovey in the Schwarzman Center. Dozens of students slept in the tents that night and continued a day of protests on Saturday, which drew greater numbers after sundown.

In an email sent to Yale Public Safety Director Duane Lovello past midnight on Saturday, Campbell expressed concern over the ongoing protest. Just a half hour prior, Campbell wrote, he received a call about a “troubling incident involving a Jewish student attempting to traverse Beinecke Plaza” but was “obstructed by protesters.” Campbell shared a video of the event he described.

“Upon reviewing the video, it is evident that criminal activity is occurring at the protest,” Campbell wrote. “The deliberate and repeated obstruction of the Jewish student’s path by protesters constitutes a clear violation of the law.”

Campbell noted in the email that he was initiating an investigation into that specific incident. But other concerning reports — counter-protesters engaging in “confrontational behavior,” protesters fearful of their privacy being violated by “individuals allegedly affiliated with pro-Israeli groups, including the use of drones for filming” — encouraged Campbell to suggest that a community-wide notification be issued regarding the ongoing protests on the plaza.

Such a notification, he wrote, would ensure community members could exercise caution navigating high-activity points on campus, and utilize “escort services” to reduce the potential for any incidents.

“It is evident that the situation is rapidly evolving and has the potential to escalate into a dangerous scenario necessitating law enforcement intervention to ensure public safety,” Campbell concluded. “I urge you to share these latest developments with senior leadership, and I am available for further discussion at your earliest convenience.”

Writing an “Overnight Notes” email to YPD Captain John Healy early Sunday morning, Lieutenant Christopher Halstead described that the crowd of protesters and counter-protesters had swelled to “several hundred” by 11 p.m. the previous night.

Additionally, a student Halstead identified as a counter-protester had reported to the YPD that she had been assaulted by an individual she had not been able to identify. 

“The victim,” Halstead wrote, “reported that she was struck in the face with a small Palestinian flag. Her face was red but there was no real visible damage.”

After failing to identify the suspect through camera footage, Halstead declined to have officers manually search the crowd for the accused individual “given the size of the crowd and mounting tensions.”

At the time that Halstead wrote his email to Healy at 6:06 a.m. on Sunday, he described no activity on the plaza, with protesters remaining in their tents. However, Halstead noted that he was fielding in-person and phone complaints and concerns about the protests.

“Given the rise in tensions and physical interactions between protesters and counter-protesters,” Halstead warned, “the situation on the plaza is going to escalate.”

Healy forwarded Halstead’s email to high-ranking YPD officers, including Chief Campbell, who forwarded it to Lovello, the Public Safety director. A separate email to Campbell about the assault sent by a member of the Secure Communities Network, an organization that calls itself a liaison between Jewish communities and law enforcement organizations, also copied investigators from the Connecticut State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

On Sunday afternoon, a faculty member reached out to the YPD concerned about reports of a “stabbing” on campus — a characterization repeated on multiple news sites. Other accounts disputed the characterization in the next weeks.

Later, after receiving further information from a Secure Communities Network source, YPD strategic initiatives director Lisa Skelly-Byrnes wrote in an email that she would recategorize the incident from simple assault to aggravated assault “as the victim was probably struck by the stick end of the flag, and she went to the hospital for treatment.” 

“It would be good to get clarification on what end of the flag struck her and also what were the extent of her injuries,” Skelly-Byrnes wrote. “Also how did the protester know she was Jewish?”

Lieutenant Halstead noted a second event of concern in his “Overnight Notes” email. A student had reported to the police that he hung an Israeli flag over a board on the plaza. The student reported that one of the protesters ripped down the flag and threw it into the “lower level of Beinecke.” Halstead wrote that he attempted to retrieve the flag but was unsuccessful. 

By Sunday evening, when Campbell confidentially emailed the entire YPD staff, he pointed to Saturday night’s tumult to again describe the protests as conducive to “criminal” activities.

“Last night, Saturday, April 20, 2024, several criminal and violent incidents occurred, resulting in injuries to members of our community,” Campbell wrote. He then notified the officers of the University’s decision to begin clearance operations the following day.

At 7:37 p.m. on Sunday, the YPD Investigative Services Unit’s Sergeant Angel DeLieto sent an “Event Action Plan” for Monday, April 22, to Campbell and the department’s assistant chiefs and captains. The plan’s objective: “to remove unwanted trespassers, structures, tents and other unauthorized material safely and securely from Yale University Properties.”

The next morning, the Yale Police arrested 44 students and four other individuals for criminal trespassing and cleared the tent encampment from Beinecke Plaza. 

Copies of the Event Action Plan and the emails that preceded it were first published by Theia Chatelle ’25. A freelance journalist, Chatelle requested copies of documents related to YPD conduct regarding pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus throughout the 2023-24 school year in January and April 2024. These requests were filed under Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act which requires public agencies to make certain records available upon request. The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission deemed the YPD counted as a public agency in 2010.

After months of following up on the unfulfilled January request, Chatelle filed a complaint with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission on April 11. Chatelle dropped the complaint after receiving the files ahead of a scheduled November hearing date in front of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission. She then published the files in a report for Jewish Currents magazine.

.All of the protesters arrested on April 22 were charged with criminal trespass.