‘Just Your Size Is Assault!’: Illinois Woman Hurls Insults at Bus Driver, Refuses to Get Off, and Sparks Police Standoff
A central Illinois bus came to a stop last fall when a woman’s antics forced the driver to pull over and call the cops.
The unidentified woman had allegedly moved from the back of the bus to confront the driver for reasons unclear. The driver told police she felt threatened.
“You made her feel alarmed and disturbed,” a University of Illinois officer told the irate woman. The Nov. 11 interaction was filmed by one of the officers present and has been shared on YouTube.
The driver said the woman made sport of her weight.
“You’re not missing any meals, either,” the driver recalled the woman telling her as she talked to police in a large parking lot in the Champaign-Urbana metro area. She also accused the driver of not being certified to drive the bus and told her, inexplicably, “You like to talk to Caucasian boys, don’t you?”
“I had to get away from her before it escalated,” the driver told cops. She called her superiors at the transit authority, and they agreed.
The unidentified woman was waiting for the cops on the bus, alone, when police arrived. At least three officers boarded the bus to confront her.
“What’s going on?” one of the cops asks.
She responds by asking if the driver had written anything down. She would repeat that question several times.
“She’ll have her side, I’ll have my side, you’ll have yours,” the woman said. She then accused one of the cops of assault.
“I have not touched you,” he said.
“Just your size alone is assault and battery,” she replied. “You are in an assertive position.”
“You chose to sit down,” he reminds her.
He then asks, probably aware he’s not going to receive a coherent answer: “Why did (the bus driver) feel the need to call us?”
“You’re not going to come in here and diagnose something you don’t know anything about,” she said.
An officer finally gives her an ultimatum: “You are not going to be on the bus anymore.”
She repeats, “I want something in writing.”
The officers’ patience is exhausted. “I’m asking you nicely,” one said.
“I’m asking you nicely to put something in writing,” she responds.
“If you don’t get off the bus, you’re getting arrested,” an officer warns.
“No, I’m not,” she said. “I want something in writing about what the problem is.”
An officer tells her, “You were being disruptive. You were being intimidating.”
The woman yells, “She’s overweight, dammit,” without explaining what that has to do with anything.
And that was the last straw. “Ma’am, grab your stuff,” an officer instructs. The officers struggle to handcuff her. Predictably, she resists. Off the bus, an officer gives her one more chance.
“I am not trying to take you to jail, but you cannot get on the bus and do the things you’ve been doing,” he tells her.
They explain to her that she risked charges of assault and disorderly conduct. After some more bickering, the decision is made to take her to the county jail. Once there, the tears start as the woman claims an officer hurt her arm.
“It’s all numb and everything,” she complains. Her complaints elicited little sympathy. Everyone’s over it.
As one viewer remarked, appropriately, “What is going on? My goodness, the world we live in.”