WMATA transit officers aren’t known as a violent bunch, but recent policy changes at the agency may help to further repress any deeply held desires to crack some commuter heads.

Since two months ago, all 380 of Metro’s transit officers have attended conflict management seminars in which they learned how to best deal with commuters that could be anything from rowdy to foul-mouthed to swinging from the hand-rails. The one-day seminars — 15 were offered at a cost of $28,641 — included role-playing in which police officers would learn to verbally diffuse delicate or disruptive situations without resorting to the not-so-diplomatic means they employed last year against two commuters who were violating WMATA’s unforgiving policies.

In one case, a 45-year old government scientist was arrested for eating a chocolate bar as she rode the escalator into the Metro Center station, while another was forced to the ground after a transit officer warned her against speaking on her cell phone in the Wheaton station. One of the most well-known incidents of commuter-related facism, though, came in 2000, when a 12-year old girl was arrested for eating a single french fry on a station platform.