The City University of New York bypassed its spending approval process to okay a contract worth up to $4 million with an ex-NYPD sergeant’s private security company that boasts of receiving training in Israel, tagged its announcement of the university deal with “#StopTheSteal” and described the student-led protests as engaged in guerrilla warfare.
In a resolution posted May 9, CUNY’s Board of Trustees said it had invoked emergency procurement protocols to approve an emergency contract with the Long Island-based Strategic Security Corp. The company was tapped to send security guards to the City College campus immediately following the April 30 confrontation between NYPD officers and campus protesters that ended in close to 200 arrests.
In its press release, the company described conditions on the ground at “college campuses nationwide” as a “surge of pro-Palestinian demonstrators” who, the company said, had been infiltrated by “seasoned agitators deploying non-permissive asymmetrical guerrilla warfare tactics to actively resist, inflame crowds, and instigate violence and chaos.”
