Police out in force one week after Temple University attacks

Saturday, October 29, 2016
VIDEO: Police out in force one week after Temple University attacks
Security tight Friday night, one week after violence broke out in the area around Temple University.

NORTH PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Security was out in force Friday night, one week after violence broke out in the area around Temple University.

As promised, Temple really beefed up their police presence along with Philadelphia police -- by bike, by car and by horse, police saturated the area.

Public Safety Director Charles Leone tells us, "If you're gonna come up here with the intent to cause some harm and hurt people and any destruction of property, then we're gonna be out here and we're ready and we're gonna make arrests and we're gonna stop that from happening."

Cell phone video captured some of the chaos that broke out after roughly 200 juveniles orchestrated a mob on Instagram.

They promoted it as a meet-up, but it resulted in wide-ranging attacks on Temple students and at least two Temple police officers who were caught off guard.

Students were kicked, punched and knocked to the ground. One had to be hospitalized.

Ultimately, four teens were arrested in the assaults.

Four teenagers are in police custody after a series of random attacks near Temple University on Friday night.

Temple University senior Mikaela Wray says, "It was shocking. I guess the number, I heard was 200 and that's a lot of people. So, it just made me nervous."

It made a lot of people nervous, and many students say they're now taking precautions.

Sophomore Morgan Dickerman says, "I'm taking a self defense class right now, which is like, the guy teaching it does like, a lot of the police work at Temple, so he's like, 'Oh yeah, we're up and policing everything.' So, I'm pretty comfortable."

Police have also been monitoring social media and they did find one posting on there that there was going to be trouble on Saturday night. But they found that not to be credible. That said, they'll continue monitoring.