Members of the Reading, Pennsylvania, city council are backing their police department despite widespread outrage over the arrest of a man who tried to quote the Bible at a Pride rally outside City Hall earlier this month.
Reading Chief of Police Richard Tornielli said during Monday’s city council meeting that the police department has been under attack since the viral incident, WFMZ-TV reported.
“Our police department has been flooded with thousands and thousands of phone calls to the point that last Tuesday we saw 700 phone calls during the daytime hours,” Tornielli said, according to the station.
He said nearly all of the calls are coming from outside the county and state, WFMZ noted.
“The thing that is troubling — beyond the fact that it potentially has impacted public safety — is that many of these calls are harassing,” Tornielli added, according to the station. “The language involved in some of these phone calls is utterly disgusting.”
He also said the calls have included “threats of violence to police officers and to their family members, including publishing personal information of police officers and their family members online,” TheBlaze reported.
Council President Donna Reed said she’s sorry for what Reading police have been putting up with, the station reported: “I believe in freedom of speech, but there are parameters of decency and civility.
I am never quite sure how people think they are making a point when they are showing their bias or natures, as they think they’re making a point.” Councilwoman Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz added that she’s “receiving personal text messages — things about my personal life that I was surprised people knew about.
This goes beyond just what the initial rally was about, and they’re widening their scope that we need to be prepared to look at what tools are available to us to take action,” WFMZ added.
“I’m going to ask council president what we might want to do as the body to take action,” Goodman-Hinnershitz also said, according to the station.
Reed replied, “I would like to think that everyone who has served or is serving or will ever serve on this body stands firmly behind our police department,” WFMZ noted.
Councilman Chris Daubert concurred that “we certainly support our officers” and “we pride ourselves on being a diverse community in every possible way, and I know our police department supports that,” the station said.
Daubert added that as police “support the diversity our community exhibits, we support your actions to help us live in a peaceful way and all of us celebrating our differences and enjoying the complements we can all bring to each other.”
