Protests at Columbia University: Dozens in custody after Hamilton Hall, encampment cleared, NYPD says [Video]

NEW YORK — Police cleared 30 to 40 people from inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall late Tuesday after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the administration building in New York earlier in the day.

Hundreds of NYPD officers acted after the school’s president said there was no other way to ensure safety and restore order on campus and sought help from the department. The occupied building had expanded the demonstrators’ reach from an encampment elsewhere on the Ivy League school’s grounds.

The scene unfolded shortly after 9 p.m. as police, wearing helmets and carrying zip ties and riot shields, massed at the college’s entrance. Scores of officers climbed through a window to enter the occupied building, streaming in over a ramp raised from the top of a police vehicle to get inside.

There have been about four dozen arrests so far by the NYPD at Columbia University, according to police sources. The first bus of protesters …