On Friday, Oct. 30, officers from the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) detained and arrested a Pomona College student on campus. Officers dragged the student from the pavement area outside Clark V Residence Hall onto North College Way between 10:14 and 10:17 p.m., where they were handcuffed.
The student later received a citation for battery of a peace officer; multiple eyewitnesses contested the validity of the charge.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LAFD) invited ABC to campus, according to an Oct. 31 email from the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) to the Pomona community. According to multiple sources, administrators who later arrived on scene on Friday evening cited the Fire Department’s alleged concern over a recent increase in alcohol abuse reports at the Claremont Colleges.
In a statement to TSL on Oct. 31, a Pomona College spokesperson expressed deep concern over the incident and confirmed that neither the college nor Campus Safety contacted law enforcement.
Officers first appeared as four students — Zena Almeida-Warwin PO ’28, anonymous students A and B and one other student — were walking from Smiley Hall towards the Clark V residence hall. Two plainclothes officers, initially standing beside unmarked vehicles, approached the students, asking for student A’s name and to see their ID. Student A, who was holding a beer, did not have their ID in their possession, but told the officers that they were of legal drinking age.
Student A stated, as corroborated by video footage reviewed by TSL, that the officers became increasingly physical and began to hold their arms. Another officer held onto student B’s arms.
“At one point, they just very much grab onto me … three to five minutes into the encounter they showed us their badge because I was like, ‘I don’t believe who you are, you could be a random person I don’t believe you,’” student A said.
Almeida-Warwin affirmed that for several minutes the plainclothes officers did not identify themselves.
“[We] were trying to gain information on why people in jackets, sweaters, flannels, Bass Pro Shop hats were grabbing onto us, when most of us were 21 years old and above,” Almeida-Warwin said. “We were all on private property, approached and grabbed and interrogated and harassed by this group of people … we were under the complete assumption that we were being kidnapped and assaulted by people pretending to be service officers.”
By 10:17, multiple students had arrived, two of whom pried officers’ hands away from student A, at which point student A slowly walked away. A crowd of students formed around the officers, recording the state officers and asking that they provide identification and an explanation as to why they were holding the students.
Additional officers arrived on the scene. TSL could not verify the precise agencies of each additional officer. The soon-to-be detained student arrived after seeing the altercation between the officers and students A and B.
“Since most of the attention was toward [students A and B], they were able to kind of grab [the soon-to-be detained student] and basically pull [them] onto the street,” eyewitness Sanja Greenawalt PO ’28 said. “So they pulled [them] onto the street from private property to public property. Then they were all grabbing [them], and they had multiple [officers] on either side, so it was a lot harder for us to go up to [them].”
Once on the street, officers handcuffed the student. According to Renee Tian PO ’27, who spoke with Associate Dean of Students & Dean of Campus Life Josh Eisenberg after he arrived on the scene, Eisenberg said that officers are not allowed to come onto private college property.
In their Oct. 31 statement to the student body, ASPC informed students that “streets are technically public property.” North College Way, where the detained student was handcuffed, is public property, while the Clark V walkway is private college property.
At 10:19, four officers picked the detained student up and physically carried them into the vehicle.
Multiple eyewitnesses described the incident as forceful and violent.
“I remember the handcuffs being placed on [the student] on the street,” Almeida-Warwin said. “And [they’re] like on the ground screaming, and then [officers] were just grabbing [them] and pulling [them].”
At no point did officers show badges to the detained student, or read them their Miranda rights. Multiple students present said the officers’ claims about the detained student’s violation were unclear and changed throughout the altercation.
Almeida-Warwin described implications of racial profiling in the incident, as the group of students interrogated included women of color.
“Two white males … had encountered the same four officers either briefly before or briefly after they came up to us,” she said, noting that the two males are her friends. “They weren’t approached or harassed.”
APSC’s Oct. 31 email also expressed concern over the incident amid “times where unidentified officers have been abducting members of communities across the United States,” seemingly referencing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps.
According to students including Greenawalt and Alex Maelor-Jones PO ’28, officers’ charges against the detained student were unclear.
Officers initially accused the detained student of underage drinking, but verbally changed the stated charge multiple times. The detained student is 21 and was not holding an alcoholic beverage.
“As [the detained student] was being dragged away, [the officers] initially refused to name a charge or reason for arrest — when pressed, they claimed [the detained student was] being arrested for drinking without an ID,” Maelor-Jones said. “At some point, they stopped claiming the prior offense, instead claiming [the detained student was] being arrested for battery of an officer.”
The identity of the plainclothes officers, and their capacity to detain a student, was also unclear to multiple eyewitnesses.
“We kept going up, and we said show us your ID, and they said get away from us you’re assaulting us, get away from us, step back,” Greenawalt said. “But they didn’t show us any information, they just acted as if we were attacking them.”
Tian corroborated that officers did not initially identify themselves when students asked. According to Almeida-Warwin, officers did not make their badges visible until students repeatedly asked to prove they were ABC officers.
A photo taken by Almeida-Warwin of officer Esmeralda Reynoso’s badge shows it as reading, “supervising agent in charge is a peace officer empowered to enforce the laws relating to alcoholic beverages and further authorized to enforce any penal provision of law any place in the state [of California].”
According to Almeida-Warwin and student A, after identifying themselves as ABC, the officers stated their purpose for coming onto campus.
“[The officers] said something along the lines of ‘we know people are going to be drinking a lot this weekend,’” student A said. “There was something specific about this weekend so [the officers] were like ‘we came here to look for people underage drinking.’”
At the scene, Dean Eisenberg and Administrator On-Call Pharalyn Robinson later spoke to students, including Greenawalt and student A. According to those students, both administrators said they were unaware of the ABC’s presence on campus before they arrived.
Multiple students recalled that administrators on the scene speculated as to why the state officers were at the Claremont Colleges.
“The administrator [Robinson] was talking to a group of us and was like the fire department has been concerned with the amount of calls they’ve gotten for underage drinking and stuff like overdosing, so we [admin] think that they called the police department,” an anonymous eyewitness said.
Greenawalt called Campus Safety at 10:18 p.m., and an officer arrived by around 10:23 p.m. According to multiple students, the officer told students to move from the street to the sidewalk and did not interfere with the ABC or CPD as the detained student was being put into the car.
“When [Campus Safety] arrived, they made us all move to the sidewalk, which is private property, thereby allowing the officers to put [the detained student] in the car,” Greenawalt said.
Multiple students spoke with the Campus Safety officer, including Renee Tian PO ’27.
“[Campus Safety] were entirely unhelpful. And they were just like, ‘[ABC] have every right to be here,’” Tian said.
Maelor-Jones also spoke with Campus Safety, urging them to support the detained student.
“[Campus Safety] failed to meet with [the student], ensure [their] safety, make sure [they were] being okay, make sure [they were] being read [their] rights, et cetera. … Just essentially told us to blindly cooperate and that the police were just blindly doing their job, which seemed like an abdication of duty to me,” said Maelor-Jones.
Students interviewed emphasized feeling unsafe on campus because of the extremity and ambiguity of the altercation, including Campus Safety’s response.
“I think people just want to know what exactly is safe and protected … and not be worried about just getting up and [being] kidnapped,” Tian said. “That is also a big reason why people were upset that Campus Safety wasn’t protecting students.”
The student was taken to the Claremont police station at 10:31 p.m. On the phone with TSL, Claremont police stated that they had not detained anyone on the Claremont College campuses on Oct. 30. Vice President of Student Affairs & Dean of Students Avis Hinkson and Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students for Academic and Personal Success Tracy Arwari, as well as Maelor-Jones and another student, arrived at the station shortly afterward. Maelor-Jones and friends drove the student back to campus, where they arrived by 11:14 p.m.
At approximately 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 31, both Hinkson and the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) separately released statements regarding the incident in emails to the Pomona community. ASPC leadership wrote that “We have been told that the ABC and CPD will likely be present tonight (Halloween) across the consortium. ABC officers are not in uniform, but may have a ‘Police’ vest, and are in unmarked vehicles.
The Pomona College spokesperson, in their statement to TSL, said that “Student Affairs leadership responded immediately to support the student involved and others who were gathered on campus.” Further, the spokesperson stated that “Student Affairs leadership has reached out to the student and is in the process of reaching out to the other students who were present to ensure they have access to the support and resources they need.”
Laura Muna-Landa, chief communications officer for The Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS), which oversees Campus Safety, stated in response to an inquiry from TSL that TCCS could not provide comment by deadline. Muna-Landa directed TSL to the statement issued by Pomona College.
Close to 5 p.m., Scripps Associated Students emailed to inform the Scripps community about the incident and reshare ASPC’s statement.
TSL contacted the LAFD and ABC by phone on Oct. 31 for comment. An LAFD respondent said they could not provide comment, and directed TSL to submit a public records request. ABC did not answer on account of the call being made during weekend hours.
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