This post was updated Aug. 25 at 7:40 p.m.

We write as members of the UCLA community to state our refusal to participate in the investigation being conducted by 21st Century Policing Solutions on the police response to demonstrations and protests occurring in solidarity with the struggle to end Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The UC Office of the President’s decision to hire and appoint a firm whose team is comprised of former police commissioners, police chiefs, retired beat officers and others dedicated to developing “innovative policing strategies” designed to reform rather than abolish – and thus secure a future of policing – makes any investigation compromised and corrupt from its inception.

It is clear to us that this investigation is intended to shield university administration and UCPD in their suppression of political dissent and of First Amendment rights to free speech.

In this, we are in alignment with an upcoming report from the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Arab Racism, which likewise finds the 21CP Solutions investigation futile and demands an independent investigation.

The police response to protesters exercising their rights to free speech has been egregious. Police have violently broken down encampments and have arrested, beat and fired rubber bullets and pepper pellets at students, faculty, staff and community members in contravention of law and policy.

While the UCLA administration deployed its campus police force to arrest over 250 pro-Palestine protesters, there has to date been only one arrest made among the hundreds of so-called “counter-protesters” who have descended on our campus to physically injure student protesters with weapons and brute force.

The police have done nothing to pursue “counter-protesters” who have and are continuing to attack, assault, harass and stalk students on and off campus.

In fact, the police and private security alike – including UCPD, LAPD, LASD, CHP, APEX Security, Covered 6 and those in plain clothes – have continued to violently repress student protesters on campus.

After witnessing UCLA’s excessive, one-sided and punitive response, pro-Palestine protesters have good reason to believe that those who participate in this investigation and disclose their attendance at rallies, encampments and other forms of protest will be charged through the criminal legal system or university conduct processes.

Indeed, the June 7 email from the UC Office of the President states, “Providing information to 21CP may not result in an investigation of the information in your email, and 21CP may not be able to respond to your email. 21CP may need to inform the University if it identifies evidence of a crime, harassment or discrimination that may violate University policy or the law.”

Why would pro-Palestine protesters who have already been unjustly and unlawfully criminalized participate in a process in which their disclosures and reports do not have to be acted upon, but may trigger criminal or university sanctions?

This investigation can only be biased and one-sided, with pro-Palestine protesters facing barriers to participation that anti-Palestine and Zionist organizers do not. Further, many pro-Palestine organizers are from Black and Brown communities that have already long experienced police violence and surveillance. As such, there is ample reason for us not to trust 21CP Solutions or this investigative process.

The pro-police bias of those conducting this investigation makes it deeply suspect and corrupt from the beginning. We will not entrust our testimonies to those who will simply use them to legitimate police violence and a punitive response to the exercise of our rights to free speech.

At the same time, 21CP’s request for individuals to supply information regarding student protesters is an attempt to create an informant base via our university membership. We will not make their work easier for them, and we will not cooperate in their surveillance of students.

We do not need a sham investigation to know that the police violence that we have witnessed in the past two months is unacceptable, as is the ongoing ubiquity of police and private security presence that has turned our campus into a police state. Instead, this is all the more reason why we need to divest from police altogether.