Celine Ryan, Campus Reform, July 1, 2019

Police arrested and charged with disorderly conduct Wednesday a masked individual who attempted to chain the door of a University of Washington-Seattle College Republicans meeting.

The group’s last meeting of the spring term featured a guest speech by the hosts of Operation Cold Front, a local conservative YouTube channel known for man-on-the-street style videos.

“A few days before the event, we received a tip that Antifa was calling for people to come disrupt the meeting, but we weren’t too worried about that since that type of thing happens all the time,” UW College Republicans President Chevy Swanson told Campus Reform.

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“About 45 minutes into the event, a man in a mask comes up to the main window and starts trying to tie a chain around the door handles,” Swanson told Campus Reform. As soon as Swanson realized what was happening, he says he leapt out of his seat and pushed the door open before the perpetrator could successfully lock the door from the outside.

{snip} Campus Reform could not independently verify that the man who was arrested is, in fact, part of Antifa.

As the individual, whom police identified as 18-year-old Ezra Benner, took off, other meeting attendees chased after him, performing a citizen’s arrest to detain him until police arrived about five minutes later.

UW police said that Benner attends a high school class on UW’s campus, according to KTTH. The 18-year-old was charged with disorderly conduct, but the UW College Republicans plan on pursuing an additional charge of unlawful imprisonment.

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Although the suspect is affiliated with the university, Swanson says he doesn’t expect the school to take any action. He claims that the university has “refused to do anything” when the club has been targeted in the past.

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“It’s hard to know if the plan was to just lock the door and leave us in there, or to do anything worse. It’s terrible either way [and] presents safety concerns [as to] whether or not they were going to do anything else.”

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