Police arrested a 17-year-old female at West Transfer Point for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after she refused to get off of a Madison Metro Bus Monday, Madison Police Department spokesperson Joel DeSpain wrote in an incident report.
The bus driver and her supervisor, females aged 48 and 63 respectively, called MPD after the teenager began loudly using vulgarities and ignored their requests to leave the vehicle, according to the report. The teenager had been warned against such behavior in the past.
Upon arrival, an MPD officer entered the bus and tried to remedy the situation by offering the girl a ride home, but she declined and proceeded to confront the driver and supervisor, “wildly swinging her arms in their direction,” according to the report.
This is when MPD officers decided to remove the teenager from the bus, handcuffing her after she responded by physically resisting and screaming obscenities, DeSpain wrote.
Bystanders witnessing the arrest reportedly began chanting “hands up, don’t shoot,” and “I can’t breathe,” demanding an explanation for why police took the teenager into custody. Some took videos of the commotion.
The MPD maintained the incident did not end as the officers had hoped and “wished some chanting in their direction would have taken a moment to understand the situation,” DeSpain said in the report.
