Police defend actions during cafeteria fight

Two teen girls were arrested in their Pennsylvania high school cafeteria — and video footage of the incident has surfaced showing school police officers restraining a student.

A student filmed two school officials at Hazleton Area High School in Hazleton, Pa., holding a girl, reportedly 15 years old, while a police officer appears to knock her in the legs. When her knees buckle, that officer grabbed her ponytail and, along with school officers, pinned her to a lunchroom table. The beginning of the video briefly shows another girl being led away by a school official. A mob of students is heard on video screaming, and one jumps onto the table.

Neither Brian Uplinger, the superintendent of Hazleton Area School District, nor the school’s police chief, Edward Harry, returned Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment.

“They only saw a very small portion of what went on, they didn’t see anything about what led up to it and the entire altercation in the cafeteria — I’m going to refer to it as a melee,” Harry told Scranton news station WYOU. “At that point, the officers had to get that under control immediately. You can see from that snippet of video, there were hundreds of kids in the cafeteria… they were all cheering her on… yelling and screaming. They needed to deescalate that.”

The girls reportedly began arguing in the school cafeteria before getting violent. “It’s important to know there are always two sides to every story, and it’s really important for parents and students and community members to get both sides of those stories before going to social media,” Uplinger told WYOU.

Harry added that four students will be expelled from school and might be charged.

According to the Associated Press, police recently took extra precaution in the Hazleton Area School District — on January 24, a 14-year-old student was arrested for allegedly making a gun threat toward Hazleton lower schools, on Snapchat. Police went to the student’s home and found a loaded handgun on a nightstand, licensed to the student’s uncle.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• School issues apology after principal appears in blackface as Steve Harvey at staff meeting

• School apologizes after teacher wore blackface during African history lesson

• Teen is criminally charged and faces expulsion for terrorizing her teacher as shown in viral video

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.