Easter trouble requires police intervention in New England

For most, celebrations over the weekend were a time to connect with family and welcome visits from the Easter Bunny.

But for a select few in New England, the holiday required police intervention.

Boston Police had a little bit of fun in the days leading up to the holiday, with one police captain sending out a string of joke tweets on Friday about arresting the Easter Bunny himself.

The mythical creature had been accused of not having permits for distributing Easter eggs, Capt. John Greland tweeted, posting a picture of the bunny in the back seat of a BPD cruiser and adding that the suspect was “pawprinted” back at the police station.

A friend bailed the bunny out, he tweeted, with 24 carrots.

Elsewhere in New England, the Easter egg dust-ups were real.

In Connecticut at the PEZ factory in Orange, crowds turned out in unexpected numbers for a community egg hunt, according to multiple reports.

When some parents in the unusually large crowd didn’t follow rules separating egg-hunters into groups by age — and, according to media accounts, dispatched their kids onto the field all at once — pushing and shoving broke out on the factory’s lawn.

“Due to the actions of a few, the good intent quickly turned into a mess,” the candy company wrote in a statement. “I would like to sincerely apologize to each of our guests, this was not something created to frustrate or make people angry. We only wanted to do good for the local community.”

An investigation is underway.

Up in Vermont, also on Saturday, at another crowded egg hunt at the Wilson Castle in Proctor, police had to use pepper spray on one man who was upset about the egg-to-hunter ratio for the event, according to an account from WCAX.com, site for a Burlington TV news station.

“Saw a lot of commotion, a lot of cursing and swearing, and I just came down to see what was going on, and the guy got belligerent with a cop, cop said okay you’re under arrest, and the guy got even more belligerent, took off running and the cop chased him,” Keith Hier, a volunteer for the event, told WCAX.

The man was arrested at the scene.