ICYMI: Popivker’s dismissed criminal charges and the viral video that led to his arrest – The Cauldron
The Cleveland State University Police Department arrested Alec Popivker on felony charges of aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation on Tuesday, Feb. 13, following a police report filed by two CSU students the Monday prior.
The police report came after a video clip that featured the two students yelling at Popivker, who was filming them, went viral.
As of Saturday, Feb. 23, however, the prosecutor dismissed the charges.
Here’s what you need to know.
The video and the police report
CSU students Rosemarie Awad and Kaia Pesek filed a police report with CSU PD after an 18-second video clip of an incident between them and Popivker, who was behind the camera, began circulating online in early February.
The original video was posted on TikTok by @alexvinnitza in November, though it gained millions of views after being reposted by several social media users, prominently @StopAntisemites on X/Twitter and @stop_antisemitism on Instagram on Monday, Feb. 5.
The video showed Awad and Pesek yelling and sticking out their middle fingers at Popivker who was in the parking lot to the right of the CSU Student Center, where he is known to park, set up pro-Israel demonstrations and engage with students.
In the police report, which the girls filed that same Monday, they alleged that Popivker initiated the incident and acted as the aggressor after he threw trash at them and “began verbally taunting them” as they passed by him, eventually leading to a “verbal altercation.” The report also stated that Popivker eventually began filming them.
In Popivker’s video, Pesek can be heard yelling, “We support genocide,” which she said in mockery “because the photos he posted were so disturbing,” according to the report. Awad also poured liquid onto the snow next to the signs that Popivker had set up. The report adds that Popivker had been “playing the recording of them over a loudspeaker for approximately 15-25 minutes.”
Pesek said in the report that the video had been “manipulated” before being posted on social media and that she, Awad and their families have since faced harassment, including slander towards Pesek’s father’s business.
Comments on social media toward the girls included:
- “Someone should have politely invited them into the traffic of a bus. Preferably a train, but a bus would work as well.”
- “What are they majoring in? Prostitution.”
- “They look like they walk the streets.”
The Cauldron reached out to Awad and Pesek several times in February for comment, with no response.
Popivker’s arrest
CSU shared the news of Popivker’s arrest in an announcement to the campus community on Wednesday, Feb. 14, following the investigation that stemmed from the report.
“While this latest arrest is connected to this specific and serious incident, Popivker has a history and pattern of alleged harassment on our CSU campus,” said CSU. “In all, there have been 10 police reports filed about Popivker’s alleged harassing or inappropriate behavior since April 2022.”
He was let out of police custody on $20,000 bail one day after his arrest and, following his first preliminary hearing on Feb. 23, the charges were dismissed.
In a statement to Cleveland Jewish News following his bail, Popivker said:
“…It’s ludicrous that I was jailed and…charged with a hate crime felony just because CSU refuses to address the real problem within their student body. Vile antisemitism.”
His arrest took place as he faces a suspended jail term and 18 months probation after being found guilty of unauthorized use of property. This case involved his theft of the banner of the CSU student organization Students for Justice in Palestine, formally known as Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. His theft of the banner eventually led to his ban from campus grounds under “persona non grata” status.
CSU response to viral video
The University released a statement on Instagram and X/Twitter in response to the viral video on Tuesday, Feb. 6, one day after it began garnering attention, to assuage mixed reactions among the community and acknowledge potential missing context.
“The rush to judgment on 90% of what’s on social media is alarming to me…,” Bloomberg shared in an interview with The Cauldron on Tuesday, Feb. 27. “Context clues told me two things: it wasn’t a recent video, because I hadn’t seen snow on that corner in weeks, and that somebody was recording, and that person wasn’t seen or heard, and I know that that’s a corner where rabbi Alec Popivker parks…I think context matters always. I think that’s one of the things that we need to help students understand, that if you’re going to be consuming information on social media, you’ve got to be a savvy consumer of it, because when you rush to judgment, you cause harm.”
The immediacy of CSU’s statement involved concern for the safety of the students in the video, according to Bloomberg. No investigations were conducted into the students, but leaders in the Division of Student Belonging and Success have had regular meetings with them.
“[The Division of] Student Belonging and Success was reaching out to them to say, ‘what do we need to do to protect you?,’” said Bloomberg.
Sometime between Tuesday, Feb. 27 and Wednesday, Feb. 28, CSU took down the statement.
CSU response to Popivker’s dismissed charges, future of campus safety
Popivker’s dismissed charges means that he could legally return to the public space that surrounds campus. CSU PD and the administration are currently having discussions about how to focus on campus safety. However, Bloomberg insisted that there are no guarantees for total safety.
“If somebody feels unsafe because he is in the city or in proximity to the campus but not violating our codes, my message has got to be, I am sorry that you feel unsafe,” said Bloomberg. “There are options we can put in place to support you, but we cannot change those circumstances.”
Bloomberg added that while she and the University administration do not have the power to stifle the freedoms of Popivker, they can focus on enforcing his “persona non grata” status and being “vigilant” about making the campus community aware of the restrictions that he has.
Only certain behaviors such as chasing or touching are illegal violations of free speech policy and therefore actionable on the part of the University, added General Counsel Sonali Wilson.
What the University can’t do, though, is monitor Popivker’s presence 24/7:
“We don’t have the resources to have someone sitting in front of a camera, watching every camera that we have. We don’t have that.”
Bloomberg suggested that students ignore Popivker’s speech altogether by giving him “a collective left deaf ear” as a means of seeing an end to this issue. She also encouraged student groups to host events and conversations to alleviate tension and facilitate dialogue.
Wilson emphasized education as a means of countering hate speech, referring students to the University’s free speech website, as well as the latest of CSU’s discussion series titled, “Courageous Conversations,” which was held in October and focussed on free speech.
“The best way to combat hate speech is with other speech, with counter-speech. We’ve had the ‘Courageous Conversations’ because I think students have to learn what…free speech [is] and what…the boundaries [are]…what is protected, what isn’t protected. That’s one of the ways that we can support, is by training and educating, because I think once you begin to understand the differences, then it makes it easier to tolerate.”
That aside, the discussions for solid safety initiatives following Popivker’s dismissed charges are still ongoing and results remain to be seen.
Students and campus members can contact CSU PD at (216) 687-2020 and Cleveland Police at (216) 623-5000.