A male suspect allegedly punched a Madison Metro bus driver after being asked to show identification with his student bus pass Saturday, highlighting the city’s recent issues with fraud and the Metro system.
According to a Madison Police Department statement, a teenage male and his two friends yelled at the bus driver and claimed they did not need to show him identification while boarding the bus on Aberg Avenue. The driver told the teenage men he was going to contact police, which allegedly prompted the suspect, a black male aged 15-18, to punch the driver.
Madison Metro spokesperson Mick Rusch said although the incident was a rare occasion, there are policies in place to handle similar situations.
Rusch added buses have cameras that allow Madison Metro to work closely with police on crimes.
Madison Metro also has an exclusion policy that bans passengers from the bus for a certain period of time if they exhibit unacceptable behavior.
The videos are currently under review, Rusch said Madison Metro will also talk to the driver about the incident and see how it could have been better handled.
“We take safety very seriously, and we work on it constantly,” Rusch said. “We work on what we can do better in the future and how to prevent it from happening again.”
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said Madison Metro bus drivers are accustomed to disruptive passengers to varying degrees, but it is very rare that physical harm is done.
According to Rusch, the policy for Madison Metro bus drivers to request identification from passengers has been in place for numerous years. Drivers have not enforced the policy as a result of busy lines in the past four years until recently. Bus drivers have full discretion on how to implement the identification policy on the bus, though they are told to avoid confrontation with passengers if possible, he added.
Rusch said the student bus passes from the Associated Students of Madison state a valid Wiscard must be presented to the driver upon request.
Madison Metro decided to recently enforce a campaign that requires passengers to show identification after discovering bus passes have been sold online or on the street. He said concerns about this arise because the passes allow riders unlimited access to buses, and they want to make sure they are in the right hands.
ASM is billed $1.15 per ride, and all students pay for this, which contributes to the concern of students selling their bus passes, Rusch said.
University of Wisconsin students are not allowed to give away or sell their bus passes, Verveer said.
Verveer said even though this appears to be an isolated incident, he said he would not be surprised if many operators start to receive verbal abuse from this policy enforcement.
“To have [the confrontation] escalate to a battery where the driver was hit in the face is absolutely unacceptable,” Verveer said. “The city doesn’t pay our bus operators anywhere near enough money to put up with this sort of criminal behavior.”
