Berkeley is “returning to its senses,” conservative author Ben Shapiro said regarding police enforcement.
Shapiro spoke with Rob Shimshock Sunday on “The Shimshock Show.”
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“These ambiguous stand-down orders are a real problem,” said Shapiro, referencing a policy with which UC Berkeley prevented its police from interfering in protest situations except when loss of life was an immediate concern. “In Berkeley, that’s not an option because if they continue to tell the police that they need to stand down in the face of people who are actually getting violent, they’re not fulfilling their basic civic duty.”
The conservative commentator recalled two prior campus speeches he gave and described situations where such police orders allowed protesters to lock doors, pull the fire alarm, or delay the speech for nearly a half-hour.
“The police said, by the way, that they were very pleased that the administration had finally untied their hands,” said Shapiro. “They’ve been watching for a year while Antifa’s been running riot in the city and finally they were told by the administrators that ‘if you need to arrest people, arrest people. If they show up in masks, arrest them. If they show up with banned weapons, arrest them.'”
“Shock of shocks, it turns out that everything was peaceful…you need law and order in order to protect the First Amendment,” he added. “But Berkeley, for a year, had ignored that; now they seem to be returning to their senses.”
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