CUNY students have gone from screaming things at David Petraeus as he walks down the street to organizing protests against his low-paid teaching position at their school. Earlier this week, six demonstrators who showed up at a Manhattan fundraiser attended by Petraeus were arrested for “disorderly conduct, riot, resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration,” The Guardian reports. A YouTube video of how that went down does not make the NYPD look very good: In the clip, you can see a police officer repeatedly punching a protester in the back and side even though he appears to already be subdued on the ground.

The incident seems to be working in the protesters’ favor. An open letter signed by over a hundred CUNY professors and graduate students and released on Thursday reads, “As graduate students and educators of CUNY, we express our outrage at the violent and unprovoked actions by the NYPD against CUNY students peacefully protesting the appointment of war criminal David Petraeus as a lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College. We deplore the use of violence and brutal tactics against CUNY students and faculty who were protesting outside the college.” It also calls for the former CIA chief to be fired. While the cops’ treatment of the demonstrators isn’t really Petraeus’s fault, it might be easier for him to just stick to that private-equity gig.