Refinery29: “Three University of South Florida (USF) students, one alum, and one community member are currently fighting felony charges after protesting against Florida’s defunding of diversity and inclusion programs (DEI) at their Tampa school. Participants of a March 6, 2023 Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (TBSDS) protest to fight against the state’s attack on higher education, Chrisley Carpio, 31; Gia Davila, 22; Laura Rodriguez, 23; Lauren Pineiro, 23; and Jeanie Kida, 26 — now known as the Tampa 5 — could each face between 6 and 11 years in prison if convicted of felony charges of battery on a law enforcement officer. The Tampa 5 say they are innocent of all charges.
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In footage that TBSDS posted on Instagram, police campus chief Christopher Daniel talks to students and then grabs Davila by the arm before throwing her to the ground. Davila alleges that once she was on the floor, Daniel groped her for several seconds. From that moment on, protesters allege that police started grabbing students and blocking their exit from the building; the group tried to de-escalate the situation.
“It was a pretty standard protest,” Lauren Pineiro, now an alumna of the university, tells Refinery29 Somos. “We were just chanting, holding signs, and we marched to the president’s office. So we were inside the lobby of that office, her office is on the fourth floor, and we were on the first floor. And I was the last one to get into the building, and by the time I got in, there were already like 15 police officers waiting for us, and they pretty immediately started to brutalize students. They arrested four people at the time.”
That day, police charged Carpio, Davila, Rodriguez, and Kida with battery against a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest without violence, and disrupting a school or campus function. Police later charged Pineiro with the same felony charges as the other protesters, and she turned herself into the police on May 3, 2023. In the video TBSDS posted, the officer grabs Pineiro’s wrists as she struggles to get free. “