A group of demonstrators booed New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly offstage during a lecture at Brown University after he'd uttered but a few words of this speech.
Administrators at Brown cancelled the event shortly after the protestors began yelling, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Kelly's scheduled appearance hasn't been met by a positive reception in the past few days, either - a handful of student groups, along with residents of Providence, R.I., tried to get the school to renege Kelly's invitation to speak, but were turned down.
Kelly is known for cutting down New York City crime to the lowest it's been in more than 50 years, but he's also infamous for implementing the hotly contested stop-and-frisk legislation, which allows law enforcement officials to search any citizen in a public space who presents a perceived danger. Some regard this practice as unconstitutional, since it encourages racial profiling and leaves much judgment in the hands of a single cop.
The university had organized a time slot for Kelly's speech, in addition to a question and answer period. Kelly intended on touching upon NYPD's method of stop-and-frisk.
But before Kelly could finish his first sentence, students booed the Commissioner heavily. Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy Marion Orr started introducing Kelly to the crowd, and the boos grew even louder.
"Are we ready to go forward?" Kelly asked after some time passed.
"Racism is not for debate!" one protester can be heard yelling in a video taken at the event.
"We want you to stop stopping and frisking people!" another shouted.
After about 30 minutes, administrators canceled the lecture.
"The conduct of disruptive members of the audience is indefensible and an affront both to civil democratic society," President of Brown University Christian Paxson wrote in a press release.
But demonstrators maintained that students should have been consulted on whether Kelly's visit was appropriate.
"They decided not to cancel the lecture, so we decided to cancel it for them," 21-year-old environmental studies student Jenny Li told the WSJ.
