Judge issues permanent injunction to protect UCLA researchers from activists

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Responding to incidents of harassment against UCLA scientists by animal rights activists, an L.A.-area judge this week made it more difficult for activists to gain access to or share information about the university’s researchers who experiment on animals. Our colleague Larry Gordon at the L.A. Now blog reports on the newly-issued permanent injunction:

The action by Judge Terry B. Friedman in Santa Monica replaces a previous preliminary injunction and forbids several organizations, five individuals and anyone working with them from demonstrating near UCLA researchers’ homes. It also prohibits the posting of personal information about the university’s employees on animal rights websites.

In March, two of the activists named in Wednesday’s injunction were indicted by a Los Angeles County grand jury and charged with threatening and harassing UCLA scientists.

However, the two were not charged with a series of separate incidents involving arsons and vandalism against researchers and their families; those cases remain unsolved, officials said.

Last month, animal rights activists and a new campus group called UCLA Pro-Test held dueling demonstrations across the street from each other near the school’s Westwood campus. The Pro-Test group was organized by none other than J. David Jentsch, a UCLA neuroscientist who uses monkeys in his research and was the target of a recent attack by an activist or activists who’ve not been apprehended.

--Lindsay Barnett