In Quakertown, deep divisions follow anti-ICE walkout, violent clash

When Bonnie Koehler and her family moved to Quakertown from Boyertown five years ago, she said it was like a dream.

“I could walk my daughter across the street to school. I created friends in the neighborhood,” she said.

That changed for Koehler on Feb. 20 when she and her husband, Zach, turned onto Front Street and encountered teens leaving a protest that had turned into a violent clash between students and police.

The high school walkout to protest immigration control policies ignited outrage within the school district of 38,000 residents after viral videos showed about a dozen students fighting with borough police Chief Scott McElree, who charged into the crowed dressed in plainclothes and put one student in a chokehold. Some diners watching from Sunday’s Deli wondered aloud why uniformed police nearby allowed the man to treat a teen girl that way.

Several students were arrested and charged, and McElree went out on workers’ compensation. An adult bystander who appeared to jump in to protect kids from the plainclothes chief was not charged.

In the days after the clash, two major narratives — one pro-police, the other pro-student — began to take hold in the school district where approximately half of voters are registered Republicans.

Quakertown remains divided over violence after ICE walkout

One position is that because the students broke the rules — either by cutting class, or by walking in the street, damaging a vehicle and resisting arrest, as police state in their affidavit — they deserved what happened. This story’s supporters put out a petition to retain the police chief and prosecute the students.

Another perspective is that nothing the students did, or are alleged to have done, justified the chief’s use of force against the teens — especially since several protesters have said they didn’t know who McElree was. Proponents circulated a petition calling for McElree’s resignation and for the students’ charges to be dropped.

This conflict has caused painful divisions between some neighbors.

As a Quakertown high school junior tearfully described in a board meeting fears that she and her family would be targeted for their brown skin, some current and former Neidig Elementary aides snickered and mocked her. Kohler said her daughter, a Neidig student, recognized the aides from school.

In the crowd behind the aides, meanwhile, the Richlandtown mayor diffused fights between other angry residents.

Quakertown Borough Council member Tim Ritter also seemed to have a problem of those who attended the board meeting.

“Did you see how stupid those people were?” he said to his wife as he stepped into the parking lot. The borough solicitor said Ritter had no comment when asked who Ritter meant.

Students remain split within the high school, interim Superintendent Lisa Hoffman said at a board meeting. Officials have held listening circles in recent weeks, but have yet to put students with different views in one circle.

As the walkout captured national attention and residents packed borough and school district meetings, several drew contrast between the recent behavior of the town’s people and the values of its namesakes, the Quakers.

“Peace — justice for all,” one resident said at a borough council meeting.

While Quakers are known for peace, newcomers such as the Koehlers may be less aware that the Society of Friends and other pacifist denominations who settled the Great Swamp also had other traditions: disowning, shunning and schism, for reasons such as selling cigarettes and marrying outside the faith.

Drive a few miles south of Quakertown today and you’ll hit two churches, side by side: Deep Run Mennonite East, and Deep Run Mennonite West. The West church’s website explains the churches split 170 years ago over topics such as whether to hold Sunday school.

The other church “eventually embraced” West’s ideas, and the two are friends again, the website notes.

Quakertown area residents face vitriol from neighbors, strangers

Quakertown residents have reported being harassed and doxxed by neighbors and internet strangers alike.

Caroline DeVenuto, among the few borough residents who’s defended McElree at council meetings since the walkout, was repeatedly shouted down by some attendees.

DeVenuto said at a meeting that both she and her kids have received threats. Other people have in turn accused DeVenuto of identifying the student protesters. She declined to elaborate on the threats she received, saying it’s a law enforcement matter, but said that she filmed videos of students who offered up the information themselves.

Meanwhile, another resident who spoke in support of the student protesters named a boy she believed sent the threat that led school officials to withdraw help from students planning the walkout at the last minute.

A social media account apparently started two years ago to discuss police in upstate New York posted a photo of the Quakertown police chief’s house, along with the address.

Koehler said that after she and her family came out publicly in support of the students and criticized the police chief, they felt more tension walking around town, shopping in the grocery store and going to work.

Alexa McDonald, a longtime Quakertown resident, shared examples of aggressive messages she received after posting in support of the students and against McElree.

“Terrorists in the making,” one commenter wrote of the students.

“Choke ’em out,” a different account wrote.

Quakertown school staff have also received a barrage of vitriolic messages, Hoffman wrote in a public letter.

At a borough meeting, council member Jonathan Sell read off an angry message he’d received.

“I don’t know how we have fallen so far that in response to such a disturbing event, we continue to lash out and attack each other,” school board President David O’Donnell wrote in the days after the walkout. “My only hope is that hate and vitriol in the comments is really coming from a small group using technology to amplify their voice.”

Local organizer doxxed by Back the Blue Facebook page

Quakertown Borough Council members tried to stop Laura Foster, an organizer with Upper Bucks United, from speaking at a meeting because she doesn’t live in the school district, a requirement for public comment.

Although many Quakertown school district residents have attended meetings and protests in recent weeks to decry McElree’s actions after the walkout and demand his removal, members of a right-wing faction have portrayed them as outsiders who aren’t part of Quakertown.

Foster, who said she was hesitant to offer more personal information given threats people have received, finally said that she also works in the borough and was allowed to speak at the meeting, along with others who work in town.

Shortly afterward, members of a Facebook page called Bucks Backs the Blue shared Foster’s home address. The since-deleted post also included her personal phone number, which borough council doesn’t require for public comment.

Foster received aggressive text messages after the post went up, according to screenshots reviewed by this news organization, and she called police. Someone also posted her employer’s address and number in the comments.

The harassment and attempts to portray people as outsiders is a tactic, Foster said, that’s deployed when “the facts are things you can’t argue.”

The violence and subsequent threats have also overshadowed why students chose to walk out: As one student who protested described it, a fear that federal agents would descend on Quakertown to take their friends and families away.