{"id":123709,"date":"2026-02-26T03:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T03:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/123709\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T03:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T03:16:08","slug":"lawyers-say-pennsylvania-student-protesters-did-not-know-a-man-who-joined-scrum-was-the-police-chief-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/123709\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers say Pennsylvania student protesters did not know a man who joined scrum was the police chief | Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 Lawyers for student protesters detained<\/a> in Pennsylvania for four days after a scuffle with police say their clients had no idea the stocky older man in street clothes who joined the fray and put his arm around a 15-year-old girl\u2019s neck was the local police chief.<\/p>\n

The attorneys said the students from Quakertown Community High School who were demonstrating<\/a> against immigration enforcement policies acted in self-defense and will fight the charges. They include a simple assault charge elevated to aggravated assault, a felony, because the alleged victim is Police Chief Scott McElree.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 Lawyers for student protesters detained in Pennsylvania for four days after a scuffle with police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46,38,741,57522,57523,1856,28,30,29,10223,233,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-123709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-general-news","10":"tag-immigration","11":"tag-immigration-student-protesters-police-pennsylvania","12":"tag-juvenile-corrections","13":"tag-law-enforcement","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","16":"tag-pennsylvania-news","17":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","18":"tag-schools","19":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123709","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=123709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}