Thugs Target Milwaukee School Bus

The notion that the sort of lawlessness that occurred after Wednesday's Juneteenth Day celebration is an aberration is complete rubbish.

The Thug Culture rears its ugly head every day in some way in Milwaukee.

It's not even safe for someone to drive a school bus on some of the city's streets.

MILWAUKEE -- School bus driver Paul Bourgeois says his bus was attacked around the 16th and Locust area on Thursday while driving his bus. He says a group of teens forced the bus to stop and that some of the teens opened the emergency exit to his bus and jumped on board. Meanwhile, he says other teens hung on to the windows of the bus and prevented him from driving.

"It was nerve rattling, believe me. When I drove off from there, I had to kind of collect myself and make sure that I knew what I was doing before I proceeded on," Bourgeois said. "They seemed to be getting a real kick out of the fact that they were trying to instill fear."

Bourgeois got up from his driver's seat and chased the teens away. "They tried to break the window," he said. "They tried to slam the door when they got off and as they began to run away, they began to throw rocks at the bus."

Of course the driver, the white driver, was scared.

(Note: We don't know the race of the teens involved in the attack. That wasn't mentioned in the report, though I'm sure Bourgeois could tell us.)

Only a day earlier, Pat Kasthurirangaian was pulled from his car and beaten by a group of Milwaukee's thugs. Naturally, Bourgeois might think that he was about to be physically assaulted.

Bourgeois says he regularly has people throw rocks and bricks and his bus - which often leads to broken bus windows. That is a problem because innocent students can be hurt by broken glass.

Lamers Bus Lines says violence against school buses is more common than people think. "We fear that something serious can happen out there," said General Manager Dean Brown. "It's not something that's isolated once or twice a year - it's more once or twice a week that we have incidents and this past year it was really bad," he said.

The most common problem for Lamers is people throwing rocks and bricks through bus windows -- even while students are on board.

I had no idea that thugs regularly throw rocks and bricks at school buses.

What a violent, senseless, dangerous thing to do!

Where would someone come up with the idea to ambush a vehicle?

Could Ald. Michael McGee have inspired the thugs?

Remember the alderman's plan to control speeders, the one he talked about on WNOV-AM?

I really want to organize some of these young guys in the community. When they see people speeding recklessly and swerving down the hood man, just start brickin’ em, for real… And start bricking these cars, man, gorilla style… And they are going to learn that you can’t drive down certain blocks and feel that they can be reckless.

Of course, I doubt that Bourgeois was speeding.

Nonetheless, McGee must be so proud of the teens that attacked that bus!

The bus involved in Thursday's incident was on a charter run and the driver had just dropped-off the passengers.

Thankfully, the driver wasn't hurt and no passengers were terrorized or injured by the attack.

Eventually though, someone will be injured.

As General Manager for Lamers Bus Lines Dean Brown says, this isn't an isolated thing that happens once or twice a year. It happens once or twice a week!

It's actually quite miraculous that no passenger has been hurt during one of these common incidents.

No bus driver should have to fear for his own safety or that of his passengers simply because he's driving down a Milwaukee street.

Those darn rock and brick throwing "knuckleheads!"