PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Some residents in the Philadelphia suburb of Quakertown are calling for the police chief to resign after a scuffle between police and high school students protesting immigration enforcement policies left several juveniles in custody for four days.<\/p>\n
Video circulating online shows an older man in street clothes approach a group of young protesters outside a delicatessen and put his arm around the neck of a teenage girl as other teens swing at him and they both fall to the ground. The American Civil Liberties Union and others identified the man as 72-year-old Police Chief Scott McElree, who also serves as borough manager.<\/p>\n
Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan, a former federal prosecutor, is investigating. McElree did not return messages left Tuesday by The Associated Press at his home and workplace.<\/p>\n
The man can be seen talking to other officers on the scene after the scuffle before getting into a vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn abandoning his job and his mission on Friday afternoon, Chief McElree effectively was acting as a counter-protester, albeit one with the ability to arrest people. Quakertown deserves better,\u201d said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The Quakertown Police Department, in a statement Friday, said five or six demonstrators were taken into custody after the group became disruptive while protesting Immigration and Custody Enforcement actions across the country. The group had staged a walkout from Quakertown Community High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome participants began engaging in disruptive behavior, including throwing snowballs at vehicles, kicking cars, and damaging property, such as tearing a side mirror from a car. Officers issued additional warnings to maintain civil,\u201d the police statement said.<\/p>\n
The students \u2014 who were detained throughout the weekend and again Monday when a snowstorm closed county offices \u2014 were due in juvenile court Tuesday for bail hearings, according to the Bucks County District Attorney\u2019s Office. The hearings are closed to the public, and no further information was immediately available.<\/p>\n
Calls left Tuesday for other borough officials, and for the school district superintendent, were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n
Speakers at a borough council meeting Monday evening called for the students\u2019 release, and more than 9,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the chief\u2019s resignation. Quakertown, about 35 miles north of Philadelphia, has about 9,300 residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police should have been there to facilitate the demonstration, ensuring that the students could safely exercise their rights to assemble and speak out freely as guaranteed by our Constitution,\u201d Walczak said. \u201cThey failed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Some residents in the Philadelphia suburb of Quakertown are calling for the police chief to resign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-122444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}