Police still pressing charges against UMass protester

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AMHERST — In the aftermath of a wave of nationwide protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza across college campuses last April and May, Massachusetts State Police are continuing to press a criminal charge against the former co-president of the University of Massachusetts Amherst chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. 

On May 7, 2024, students and community members formed an encampment near the W.E.B. Du Bois Library on the UMass Amherst campus, which led to the arrest of 134 people after school administrators called in around 160 state officers and other local police who ordered protesters to disburse. The region’s district attorney largely dismissed or reduced criminal charges against those arrestees. And although UMass police initially attempted to charge the Students for Justice in Palestine co-presidents with felony “inciting to riot,” the university ultimately dropped that effort.

However, The Shoestring has now learned that Massachusetts State Police have continued to seek a misdemeanor charge of “assault and battery against a police officer” against one of those co-presidents.    

Maysoun Batley, who was not among those arrested that night, was arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court in December. The charge stems from a criminal complaint that Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Luis Rodriguez submitted on Aug. 22, 2024, shortly after the UMass Police Department withdrew its complaint against Batley and fellow Students for Justice in Palestine co-president Rüya Hazeyen on Aug. 12. 

In his complaint, Rodriguez claims that at the May 7 protest, Batley “cocked her head back and screamed into my face stating, ‘Fuck you!, five separate times.” 

“Each time BATLEY yelled ‘Fuck you!, she sprayed my face with her spit,” the complaint reads. 

Rodriguez also alleged that Batley spat on his uniform.

Batley’s lawyer, however, says that’s untrue.

“Ms. Batley is innocent,” her lawyer, Jack Godleski, told The Shoestring. “The interaction is video and audio recorded. She spit on the ground. It isn’t a crime to spit on the ground near a police officer.” 

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Tensions ran high throughout the evening, with protesters swearing at officers and police threatening the use of pepper spray. At one point, Rodriguez said to another officer that “a girl” spit in his face.

Later that evening, he told fellow officers, “they spit in your face, you fucking spray them.”

Rodriguez has not responded to a request for comment sent to the Massachusetts State Police’s spokesperson. A message sent to a LinkedIn profile believed to belong to Rodriguez has gone unanswered. 

Last month, a Shoestring investigation of body-cam footage from the protest found that Rodriguez was among those officers who showed violent and derogatory police behavior toward protesters. 

“I will break your ankle,” Rodriguez said while arresting one protester. A few minutes earlier Rodriguez can be seen grabbing a Palestinian flag from a fence. “I want this as a souvenir,” he told another officer. “I’m not going to rip it down now because it’s going to incite.”

Later that night, he chased down and tackled onto a paved sidewalk a protester who appeared to be trying to film the police on his cell phone. 

“You’re under arrest, bro,” Rodriguez can be heard saying. “I’m going to get you. You’re going. Come over here.” 

While Rodriguez wrestled the protester to the ground, another officer yelled “stop resisting” and threatened to pepper spray them.  

In response to The Shoestring’s previous investigation, a state police spokesperson said that the agency is “reviewing body-worn cameras from this event last spring to ensure that our members’ actions align with the Department’s policies and expectations of professional conduct.” 

Asked about the case against Batley, a different state police spokesperson, James DeAngelis, declined to comment this week. “It would be improper for us to comment on the ongoing criminal proceedings,” he said. 

In Massachusetts, assault and battery on a police officer is a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of two and a half years in prison and a $5,000 fine. 

Batley is the only person that The Shoestring has identified who is still facing criminal charges related to the May protest. All of those who were arrested had their cases resolved short of trial, the majority agreeing to a diversion program and a much smaller number being found civilly responsible and fined $100. 

“The diversion program was essentially a dismissal, as there was no requirement for action,” said Laurie Loisel, the spokesperson for the Northwest District Attorney’s Office. Asked about the charge against Batley, Loisel directed The Shoestring to the Massachusetts State Police.

“This was not an NWDA decision,” Loisel told The Shoestring in December, prior to the case being assigned to the district attorney’s office. 

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It is not clear why UMass police withdrew the original complaint they submitted against Batley and Hazeyen — which included felony incitement to riot charges — only for state police to submit a new complaint against Batley. 

“From the sequence of events, it appears to me that Sgt. Rodriguez did not agree with UMASS’s decision and sought charges himself as a state police trooper,” Godleski wrote in an email. 

Because Batley was not arrested during the protest, state police brought the complaint before the court in what’s known as a “show cause hearing” in which a clerk magistrate decides if the charge can move forward. 

Godleski said that the body-cam footage of the altercation was not shown during the show cause hearing.

A public records request sent to the state police in November for any records mentioning Batley has not been answered despite multiple appeals to the state’s supervisor of public records. 

Last August, prior to the original UMass complaint being withdrawn, university spokesperson Melinda Rose told The Shoestring that Chancellor Javier Reyes was aware of the charges but “out of respect for the independence of the judicial system” he would “not intervene in or comment on an active criminal proceeding.” 

Rose also said that Reyes had asked that “the circumstances that led to the filing of these particular charges” be included in an independent review the university has commissioned into the events of May 7. In January, the school released an investigation conducted by the law firm Prince Lobel into the decision to call in state police to break up protests against the Gaza war last April and May. There was no mention of the now-withdrawn riot charges in that report. 

Chancellor for News and Media Relations Emily Gest did not answer an inquiry about the withdrawn charges, or why the independent review that the school released in January did not address the riot charges. Police Chief Ian Cyr did not respond to an inquiry about why the first complaint was withdrawn. 

“You’ll need to talk to the State Police about that case,” she wrote in an email about the more recent criminal charge against Batley. “They are the ones who filed charges.” 

According to Rodriguez’s report, he was able to identify Batley with the help of UMass police Lt. Brian Henault. 

It is likely that Henault was familiar with Batley because of her leadership role in Students for Justice in Palestine and because he was the officer who prepared the UMPD’s “Ops Plan” to remove encampments on April 30 and May 7, according to a heavily redacted document that The Shoestring obtained through a public records request. 

In the plan, Henault identifies Students for Justice in Palestine, along with another student group called UMass Dissenters, as the “two primary protest groups” on campus. “These groups have called on the University to divest itself of relationships with military suppliers and have specifically called on UMass-Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes to publicly ‘condemn Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians,'” Henault wrote. 

“In October of 2023 these groups attempted an occupation of the Whitmore Administration Building, which resulted in 57 arrests after the building had closed and the protesters intentionally remained inside to trespass,” Henault wrote. 

Batley told The Shoestring that she was among those arrested at the October 2023 event, for which she was initially charged with criminal trespass — a charge later reduced to a civil infraction. She said the school’s administration also sanctioned her for violating the code of conduct. Batley, who graduated last May, was not subject to any university sanctions following the May 2024 protest, but other students were, with an undisclosed number having their diplomas temporarily withheld because of it, according to a statement released by the school. 

In response to an inquiry from The Shoestring, UMass refused to disclose how many students had been subject to code of conduct violations related to on-campus protests. 

“This is confidential even in aggregate,” Gest said. “That’s university policy.” 

Individual student information is subject to strict privacy rules under Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but according to the Department of Education, “nothing in FERPA prohibits a school from disclosing information in aggregate.“

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In September, the university updated its internal guidelines on how a campus task force called the Demonstration Response and Safety Team should monitor protests and report the events to school administrators. 

A document obtained through a public records request that UMass Amherst provided with improperly made redactions directs the safety team to conduct surveillance on students during any on-campus protests and political demonstrations. In an attempt to de-escalate violations of campus policy, the team is required to “document any disruptive activities in the most accurate way possible” and submit reports about the event to the school’s administration. 

Members of the safety team are provided with a prepared script to read when interacting with protesters.

“We are here to support your First Amendment right to free speech in this demonstration,” the script reads. “We have already requested that you stop (name policy / law violations / disruptive behavior) twice. As the University staff member overseeing this area, I am notifying you that based on this behavior, we are directing you to immediately either stop and/or leave the building/location/area. At this time, I am also requesting that you provide me with your name and that we will be submitting a Student Conduct Referral.”

If protesters refuse to identify themselves, the safety team is then instructed to say: “Our goal is not to get UMass Police Department involved, but if we cannot identify you as a member of the campus community we have to assume you are not affiliated with the University.”

The policy is likely to affect students who may be wary of being harassed or doxxed due to their political views, such as happened to members of Students for Justice in Palestine following their involvement in protests last year. 

Batley said she was among those subject to harassment, both on and off campus. That includes being doxxed by The Canary Mission, an anonymously run website that publishes the personal information of those it believes to be anti-Israel. 

On campus, Batley was one of three students who obtained a harassment prevention order against another student named Benjamin Goldstein. On Feb. 13, Goldstein was arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court for violating one of his harassment prevention orders after he sent a direct message from an Instagram account he runs called @umass_zionists, according to court documents.  

Goldstein pleaded not guilty, court records show. He did not respond to a request for comment sent to an email address listed on his LinkedIn page. Goldstein’s attorney, Jared Olanoff, declined to comment. 

That same Instagram account is one of several social media accounts cited in a Title VI civil rights complaint against the school, which prompted the Department of Education to open an investigation into UMass.

“Despite repeat notice, including numerous emails and formal complaints to over a dozen administrators and Title IX officials, UMass was extremely slow to take action, and instead stonewalled and exacerbated the hostile environment by engaging in its own anti-Palestinian actions by arresting Arab and Palestinian students and their allies, posting their home addresses online even after the shooting of three Palestinian students in nearby Burlington, VT, subjecting them to campus disciplinary charges, and denying them education opportunities in the form of study abroad,” reads the complaint filed by the Chicago based non-profit Palestine Legal on behalf of 18 UMass students. 

That investigation is still pending, according to the education department’s website. So, too, is another complaint that the Anti-Defamation League has brought against the university alleging “deliberate indifference to antisemitism.” 

“In addition to allowing antisemitic violence to go unchecked, UMass-Amherst has permitted genocidal chants and rhetoric to permeate campus and allowed certain student groups to halt academic and social activity through their protests,” the complaint reads.

On Jan. 29, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitsm,” which directs the head of each executive department or agency to submit a report identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism. It further directs the secretary of education to submit an inventory and an analysis of all Title VI complaints and administrative actions related to anti-Semitism since Oct. 7, 2023. 

In a statement from the White House, Trump said that he intends to revoke visas and deport international students who are “pro-Hamas.” 

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” he said. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” 

Reporter divina cordeiro contributed reporting to this article.

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