Metrobash III : MDTA Smackdown!!!!
Date: January 17, 2000
Route: 1, Busway MAX, many others.
Bus: 6032, 9031, etc.
Location: Dadeland South Metrorail Station
I'm not sure how it happened, but during the evening rush-hour on MLK Day Dadeland South turned into a madhouse. It all went down on the Busway side of the bus area, largely in the area around Bay 5, where Busway MAX picks up it's people. During the day the annual Martin Luther King Parade is held along NW 62 St. in Liberty City. After the parade there is a festival. Many people from South Dade and Homestead/Florida City went, and by 6 PM they were on their way home, coming off the train and waiting at the station for the southbound buses. Among the large crowds of people were members of rival gangs. All female gangs, in fact. The two groups met up, and began fighting. The surrounding crowd began to get drawn into it. A few minutes later the cops came, up to 20 waded into the fighting crowds swinging their clubs and making arrests. Order was restored for a while.
During this time many buses avoided that area since they couldn't go through the huge crowds. So the same people stayed there and the trains kept bringing people in , every 6 minutes, which made the problem worse. Even after the cops hauled the fighters off to jail there were still over 100 people waiting there. Now I missed the big party since I was at that time heading north on the Busway to Dadeland. Running with me was a Busway MAX, 9031. We got there at 6:40. I had to keep going but first I went to the supervisor to see what was wrong. The supervisor had to escort 9031 and the 1 bus ahead of me, 7005, through the gauntlet to the other side. This is where the chaos erupted again. As the poeple began boarding the MAX bus, fights began to break out again all around the bus. One girl actually ripped off her shirt and jumped into the mob.
The supervisor breifly boarded the bus to take a look and as soon as he got off the driver shut the doors and hit the gas. His bus and 7005 probably got huge loads. Now the situation didn't end there. As the MAX rumbled south on the Busway, the angry and hyper passengers began to play jokes on the driver, telling him to shut the air conditioner off when it was actually suffocating. The driver put it back on and turned it up so 9031 became a freezer on wheels. A little further down a scuffle broke out on the bus and it blew up into a huge fight. The fight was broken up before the driver called the police, but it was wild all the way down to Florida City, the atmosphere on that bus was poisonous. Other MAX drivers later said there was fighting on their buses, too.
At 6:55 PM came my turn. After I went up to Dadeland North, on my way back I picked up passengers who got off hte train and walked out to the stops at Dadeland Blvd. to avoid the madness at the station. I went in, and I went around to the other side of the bus waiting area, where the action was (D.S.'s bus zone is oval shaped- one half is in a tunnel. The other half is where the busway buses pick up. Unlike the other buses, I went in there by myself. And I paid for it. When I got to Bay 7, where the 1, 52 and 65 pick up, there were up to 75 people waiting on the 52, the crowd was overfcflowing into the bay, so I couldn't pull in there. I stayed outside and picked up 4 people. Then the crowd tried me. One guy said 'wait, there's one more coming'. There wasn't anyone else coming. The guy saw I waited and said loudly to his homeboys 'That n#@ga 's stupid as f#ck". So I hollered at him to shut up. The I slammed the doors and hit the gas. I smoked the whole bunch of dumba#ses. They tried to kick my windows in, but I was too quick on the gas. Eventually a 52 came, an artic, and hauled the whole bunch off. That bus has standing passengers. Little by little, the situation calmed down, and by 9 PM there were only a few people, the regular people that ride at that time and had no idea what had gone down earlier. Plenty of arrests were made, mostly females since the gang war was between two gangs of girls. I don't think any driver who went through there, including me, will forget this night.