Nearly two dozen residents and Quakertown taxpayers confronted the borough council Wednesday night at a public meeting, castigating its members for refusing to discipline the town’s police chief and demanding that they take action before leaving the room.
The backlash was the latest fallout from a Feb. 20 student protest against federal immigration enforcement that began as a walkout from Quakertown Community High School and ended in a confrontation between Police Chief Scott McElree and a group of teenagers. The encounter, which was captured on video, led to the arrests of several teenagers and prompted an investigation by the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.
Wednesday’s meeting, which stretched to nearly two hours as speakers stepped to the podium one by one, laid bare a community in turmoil. Residents described fear, anger, and embarrassment that their small town had become a national flashpoint. By the end of the night, council members had made no motion and held no discussion about potential discipline for McElree.
Council President Donald Rosenberger opened the meeting by telling the audience that the nine-member council — eight men and one woman — would not consider action against McElree or comment until the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office completes its investigation.
McElree, 72, also serves as the borough’s manager, a role that includes overseeing the police department and managing public records.
Outside the locked doors of borough hall before the meeting, more than three dozen people — adults and teenagers — gathered holding handmade signs. One woman had scrawled “peaceful protester” across a flattened cardboard box in black marker. Beneath it she wrote: “Don’t put me in a chokehold, mmkay?”
Inside the crowded chamber, speakers urged council members to reckon with the national attention now focused on the town and warned that their response — or lack of one — would shape voters’ decisions in November.
Nearly every speaker who addressed the council called for McElree to be fired and criminally charged.
Joseph Rittenhouse, who said his niece was among those arrested after the clash, told council members that images of her bloodied face were now among the first results people see when they search for Quakertown online.
“We are national news. If you’re OK with that, I don’t think any of us are going to be OK with you sitting up there” when voters go to the polls, Rittenhouse said.
A handful of people who identified themselves as immigrants or women of color said the episode has shaken their sense of safety in the community, leaving them worried about how they or their children might be treated.
“It leaves me breathless as to how this is possible in America,” said Illeana Ramos. “Everyone is scared.”
Laura Foster, who leads Upper Bucks United, a local civic group that has organized demonstrations since the altercation, said the council’s refusal to act had forced residents to step into a role that should belong to elected leaders.
“You are failing to act as leaders in this community,” Foster said. “I don’t need to be doing this. You should be doing this.”
Only one resident spoke in support of McElree.
Caroline DeVenuto said officers had been “sent on a fool’s errand” when they were called to respond to a gathering of teenagers, and blamed parents for allowing the situation to spiral.
“It’s time for parents to grow up and discipline their children like the rest of us,” she said.
DeVenuto also criticized news coverage of the confrontation, calling portrayals of McElree and the police department “slander and deceit.”
Residents and advocates first called for disciplinary action against McElree at a borough council meeting three days after the Feb. 20 confrontation. By Wednesday evening, a petition seeking his resignation had drawn more than 12,000 signatures, though it was unclear how many of the signers live in the borough.
Videos recorded by bystanders and reviewed by The Inquirer show McElree grappling with several students, at one point wrapping his arm around a teenage girl’s neck before taking her to the ground. McElree left the scene bleeding, the videos showed.
Five teenagers were charged with aggravated assault, a felony, and related offenses. They are on house arrest with ankle monitors, their attorneys said.
In the affidavit of probable cause for the arrest of one of the teenagers, officers wrote that McElree had been attempting to take a student into custody when the encounter escalated. A teenage boy struck him in the ear, the affidavit said, and others hit him in the shoulder and ribs.
The document does not mention a chokehold.
According to the affidavit, McElree sought medical treatment for undisclosed injuries. More than a week later, he began a workers’ compensation leave, the borough’s attorney said.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office is investigating the encounter and has declined to comment.
At least three defense attorneys have asked the Pennsylvania attorney general to assume control of both the investigation and the prosecution, and to dismiss the charges.
In an email last week, lawyer Ed Angelo wrote that the affidavit “rendered only allegations that were damning to the children, but left out the assaultive behavior of the chief of police — behavior the children fought to protect themselves from.” He called the prosecution “an obvious and unacceptable conflict of interest.”
On Friday, the attorney general’s office declined to intervene, saying in an email that “it would be inappropriate for our office to engage” in the investigation or the case.