WMATA, facing criticism from an array of officials, commuters and the blogosphere, has posted “the full story” regarding the case of the pregnant woman detained by a transit police officer for disorderly conduct at a Wheaton bus shelter. WMATA brings out the big guns to hammer home their contention that the woman’s actions forced the swift detention. Says Robert Smith of Maryland, the chairman of the WMATA board: “This was a very unfortunate incident and no one is happy that it occurred. But the woman’s conduct forced the officer to take the actions that he did. In a situation such as this, the last thing we wanted to do was take someone into custody.”

So according to WMATA, here’s what happened:

The incident began after a police officer observed the woman yelling obscenities into her cell phone at the Wheaton Metrorail station. He saw that her behavior was causing other customers to walk away from the immediate area. He approached her and asked her to please lower her voice and stop yelling obscenities. The woman instead turned her anger toward the police officer, cursing loudly at him (“You can’t tell me what the f**k I can do!”) and continuing to disturb other Metro customers. The officer tried several times to calm the woman down and asked that she maintain her composure and stop cursing or leave Metro property. Instead the woman continued to hurl obscenities toward the officer (“F**k you!”).