The night before he was arrested, Caravello spoke at a City of Camarillo council meeting and declared that he was “patrolling the city streets following armed masked thugs trying to kidnap my [undocumented] neighbors.”
During the raid, Caravello, a philosophy and math lecturer, was detained and arrested after he threw the device at agents. Body camera footage captured Caravello first attempting to kick a canister and then picking it up and throwing it overhand toward agents.
Faculty at the university supported Caravello, and the California Faculty Association (CFA) claimed Professor Caravello was “kidnapped” in a reel on Instagram: “Four masked agents dragged Jonathan away into an unmarked car without identifying themselves, without giving the reason for arrest, and without disclosing where they are taking him.”
This is not the first time that faculty have rallied around faculty who have allegedly taken violent action during protests.
At the University of California, Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty. She was later honored as a model for women advocates.
At Hunter College in New York, Professor Shellyne Rodríguez was shown trashing a pro-life display of students.
She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”
Unlike the professor, the students remained calm and respectful. One even said “sorry” to the accusation that being pro-life was triggering for her students.
Rodríguez continued to rave, stating, “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.” In an Instagram post, she is then shown trashing the table.
Hunter College, however, did not consider this unhinged attack to be sufficient to terminate Rodríguez.
It was only after she later chased reporters with a machete that the college fired Rodríguez. Another college then hired her.
Caravello is facing a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.