Some residents at a Quakertown council meeting on Monday night called for the suspension of the borough’s police chief due to his handling of an anti-ICE protest involving high schoolers on Friday, Feb. 20.
Five teenagers and one adult were arrested in the high school walkout, which school officials advised against, but still totaled around 50 students.
Police responded to 5th and Broad streets in Quakertown at around 11:35 a.m. as the students marched in the area. Police said they warned the students to stay out of traffic. As the protest reached East Broad Street, according to police, some of the students began throwing snowballs at vehicles, kicking cars and damaging property.
At some point, police and protesters began getting into a confrontation that was caught on cell phone video from several different angles.
Quakertown’s police chief, according to Upper Bucks United, was seen in the video in plain clothes and did not identify himself before engaging with the high schoolers.
He also appeared to have put a student in a headlock, the group said.
People who showed up to the meeting on Monday urged the police chief to resign, or be suspended. Some even called for him to be fired.
Colin Hancock spoke at the meeting and said he was one of the high school students participating in the protest when the viral altercation occurred.
“I remember being very afraid at the time that everything was happening, and that’s simply not ok in any regard,” Hancock said at the meeting.
Hancock spoke to NBC10 after the meeting as well, saying, “A cop came over and started talking to us because one girl was in the street. And that’s when the chief of police, dressed in plain clothes — we were not aware he was chief at the time — he ran over and grabbed a student by his backpack and yanked him over and started beating him up.”
Adult residents attended the meeting and expressed their disapproval of the police chief’s handling of the incident as well.
“This act that he did now is absolutely egregious, and our community is sickened by it,” said Laura Foster. “All of us, we’re heartbroken. The trauma these kids went through was deplorable. And we would expect better from our police, and we would expect more from our borough. At this point we would have hoped that they made a statement. We’re hoping to get some answers tonight.”
The Bucks County District Attorney’s office said they are conducting an independent investigation of the incident.
NBC10 reached out to the police chief several times for comment, but have not heard back from him.