Officials in one Jersey Shore town said they are investigating a Twitter account that published several videos of what appeared to be students fighting on school grounds.
The Asbury Park Press, which first discovered nearly two dozen fight videos, reported on Thursday that the Twitter account was deleted not long after it asked school and city officials in Neptune about the account.
"We're not going to stand for this," said Neptune Police Capt. Mike McGhee. "This isn't anything that happened back to back, a compilation that people put on line, it gives a bad appearance of course, but we are definitely looking into everything."
According to the newspaper, several videos posted as recently as Oct. 18 appeared to show several students fighting as other students cheer on and record the fights.
Police said that most or all of the videos were filmed in Neptune, and school officials said that most of the fights were filmed in 2015. Some students were arrested for their roles in the fights or were disciplined afterward.
Schools superintendent Tami Crader said that the school district asked Twitter to remove the account after it learned of its existent.
"Whenever they can gain notoriety by some of this violent behavior, it perpetuates more violence," she said. "So we're trying to work with the large majority of our students who are well behaved, polite and friendly and in school for the right purpose to get them in marginalizing those students who are here for the wrong reasons."
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Students and parents, meanwhile, decried the videos. One parent said the students should be disciplined at home and at school, while student Unity Teller said that her classmates should act more mature.
"First of all, stop fighting," she said. "It doesn't solve anything and there are better ways to deal with situations."
