Cal Poly Humboldt students had been occupying a campus building in solidarity with Palestine for three days when then-university President Tom Jackson decided to bring the demonstration to an end. But he didn’t think the university could break the occupation, some two dozen members strong, on its own. In an email to the sheriff of the Humboldt Police Department on April 25, 2024, Jackson asked to tap a pool of policing cash clothed in the language of anarchist solidarity: the “law enforcement mutual aid system.”

In California, the Law Enforcement Mutual Aid Fund sets aside $25 million annually to let law enforcement agencies work across jurisdictions to fight natural disasters and other major emergencies. In a briefing obtained by The Intercept, acceptable LEMA use cases are listed as fires, storms, flooding, earthquakes, natural or man-made disasters, and “other extra ordinary events requiring emergency law enforcement mutual aid on a case by case basis.”

Leadership at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt — part of the California State University public school system — was able to tap these funds to bring outside law enforcement onto campus, The Intercept found in an investigative series on the university playbook for crushing pro-Palestine protests. Among more than 20,000 pages of documentation The Intercept obtained via public records requests, email after email from April and May 2024 show chiefs of police and administrators in California’s public universities asking outside law enforcement agencies to enter their campuses and clear encampments.

As “Gaza solidarity” encampments popped up across college campuses in April and May 2024, Jodi Lopez, staff services manager at California’s Office of Emergency Services, informed the leadership of at least 30 public universities — including Cal Poly Humboldt — that if they were to require mutual aid assistance, LEMA would be available to reimburse their expenses, attaching a flyer that detailed eligible costs.

Cal Poly Humboldt students first entered and staged a peaceful sit-in at Siemens Hall on April 22. According to the documents obtained by The Intercept, leadership at the university was promptly in contact with local police departments about........

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