LAS Shielded Board Member Who Enabled Police Brutality
By Navruz Baum
On the night of April 30, 2024, Columbia University became the site of a brutal crackdown. NYPD officers stormed the campus wielding batons, zip-tie cuffs, firearms, and flashbang grenades, moving in formation toward the Palestine-solidarity encampment. Protesters, unarmed and linking arms, barely had time to react before riot police struck. A student was thrown down a stone staircase, their limp body striking each step before slamming face-down on the pavement below.
Inside Hamilton Hall, police deployed flashbangs—explosives that cause a blinding flash and deafening concussive blast. These devices, which have killed people in past police raids, detonated in the enclosed space. Outside, an armored Lenco BearCat equipped with a mechanized drawbridge inserted officers through a second-story window. Gun-wielding squads poured in. Amid the chaos, an NYPD officer fired a live round inside the building. Officers messaged each other in the aftermath: “thought we fucking shot someone.”
For hours, hundreds of students were brutalized, zip-tied, and dragged into the night by the Strategic Response Group (SRG), the NYPD’s militarized unit notorious for crushing protests with overwhelming force. Hundreds more at City College of New York faced the same treatment. By May 2, the brutality was undeniable—captured in videos, witness statements, and even acknowledged by the Manhattan DA’s office.
The Legal Aid Society, the self-described “largest, most influential social justice law firm in New York City,” should have led the condemnation. Instead, it issued a tepid, procedural complaint, criticizing police officers for “detaining and processing demonstrators who were ultimately charged on low-level offenses and who should have received an appearance ticket.”
That was it. Not a word about the baton beatings. Not a word about the flashbang grenades exploding in a confined space. Not a word about the reckless discharge of a firearm inside Hamilton Hall. Not a single mention of the unjustifiable militarized police response.
An Uncharacteristic Silence
To LAS’s credit, it has previously denounced such tactics.
In response to the police crackdown on the George Floyd Protests in 2020 it even sued the mayor and declared “swarming officers used batons, pepper spray, and other aggressive techniques to retaliate against New Yorkers for showing their support of Black lives and demanding an end to police violence. Such uses of excessive force against these demonstrators violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights.”
But on May 2, with Columbia students still recovering from head trauma, LAS merely complained about processing delays.
Workers at LAS saw the problem immediately. On May 3, four ALAA members published a blistering critique: “one might reasonably expect that the city’s oldest public defender organization would issue a statement condemning the severe brutality of the NYPD, which has perennially wielded the same violence against our clients. Instead, the Legal Aid Society—which has previously had no trouble denouncing NYPD violence—issued a muted statement… by failing to explicitly condemn the police’s brutal behavior toward the students, our organization tacitly underwrites their viciousness.” They weren’t alone. In the days that followed, dozens of workers flooded management’s inboxes, demanding an honest accounting.
They got one thing right—LAS’s silence was indefensible. But they hadn’t yet uncovered what made this case uniquely damning.
Burying the Truth
David Greenwald, Treasurer of The Legal Aid Society Board of Directors, was responsible for the Columbia crackdown.
Greenwald, a longtime private equity lawyer, is Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees at Columbia University. In testimony before Congress, he bragged about his role in repressing pro-Palestine student activism—locking down campus, banning student groups, and calling in the NYPD.
At the very moment students were being brutalized by riot police, Greenwald sat atop both institutions—one overseeing the crackdown, the other tasked with defending its victims.
LAS’s silence wasn’t just ideological cowardice—it was a damning conflict of interest. Greenwald, one of LAS’s most powerful board members, set the stage for riot police to storm Columbia—then benefited from an organizational response that downplayed police violence and abandoned its victims. Rather than disclosing his role, LAS buried it.
Worker Pressure and the Forced May 6 Statement
Management may have been compromised, but workers fought back. The May 3 union statement and subsequent emails called out LAS leadership for their silence. By May 6, LAS was forced to issue a second, stronger statement, now acknowledging what had been undeniable from the start: “The NYPD’s aggressive and militaristic response to student protests that led to rampant violations of protesters’ constitutional and statutory rights deserves immediate scrutiny and accountability.”
This shift didn’t happen because LAS leadership suddenly found a conscience. It happened because workers refused to let them bury the truth.
The Crackdown Continues
April 30 was a flashpoint, but the crackdown didn’t end there. On March 13, 2025, the federal government escalated its repression, issuing a directive to David Greenwald and two other Columbia leaders demanding mass expulsions and disciplinary action against protesters. That same day, Columbia expelled Grant Miner, president of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710—just one day before contract bargaining was set to begin—and sanctioned 21 other students with suspensions, expulsions, and degree revocations. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia graduate student and activist, was detained by ICE and transferred to a Louisiana detention facility without formal charges. Greenwald, who had already justified the repression before Congress, now oversaw Columbia’s cooperation in a purge of the federal government’s political targets.
Legal Services Should Defend the Public—Not Its Board Members
David Greenwald’s presence atop LAS makes a mockery of its mission. This is the city’s largest public defender office—claiming to fight against police brutality—while taking orders from a man responsible for one of the most violent crackdowns in recent history.
Even after the crackdown’s brutality became public knowledge, LAS kept Greenwald on its board. No demands for his resignation. No accountability. Just business as usual. What does it say about a public defense organization when it refuses to distance itself from the very people responsible for police violence?
This is the corporate capture of legal services in action. Greenwald isn’t an anomaly—he’s part of a system where corporate lawyers and financial elites control publicly funded legal services. As long as Wall Street lawyers oversee eviction defense, as long as millionaires dictate services for indigent clients, as long as board seats are handed over to donors while workers and clients are shut out, conflicts of interest aren’t a possibility—they’re inherent.
But this fight isn’t over. The May 6 statement proved that worker pressure can force these institutions to stand by their clients. Now, workers are demanding structural change to break elite control. They are fighting for worker and client representation on boards of directors, ensuring that decision-making power is in the hands of those who do the work and those who are directly impacted.
The rich may attempt to wield legal services to shield themselves from accountability, but workers have made it clear—they will not stand by and let it happen.
