The Orange County District Attorney charged 10 protesters on Wednesday for failing to leave UC Irvine while police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment last May.
“The right to peaceful assembly is a constitutional right and we encourage protestors to exercise their right to peaceful assembly on any issue,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “However, criminal activity which transcends peaceful assembly will not be tolerated.”
Prosecutors charged nine of the defendants with a misdemeanor count of failure to disperse at the scene of a riot. Along with the single count of failure to disperse, The District Attorney’s office charged a 50-year-old man from Irvine with two additional misdemeanors: resisting a peace officer with the threat of violence and resisting arrest.
Spitzer’s office said they are reviewing evidence for 40 more people arrested after police issued dispersal orders.
The demonstration happened on May 15 after demonstrators surrounded a lecture hall near the encampment, prompting the university administration to call law enforcement to the campus. At the time, UC Irvine’s Chancellor Howard Gillman stated that the administration had exhausted all options “before resorting to police intervention.”