Yesterday, we reported on a disturbing piece of video which depicted two Metro Transit Police officers restraining and arresting a wheelchair-bound man outside the U Street Metro station. The video has drawn plenty of reaction — enough for Metro to finally respond to what happened.

Here’s WMATA’s statement regarding the incident:

On Thursday, May 19, the Metro Transit Police on routine patrol at the U St. Metrorail station observed a patron in a wheelchair drinking an alcoholic beverage. The officers asked the patron to leave the area and he refused. The officers then attempted to issue the patron a citation and when the patron refused to comply with the issuance of a citation he was told that he would be placed under arrest. The patron resisted arrest which resulted in him falling out of his wheelchair. The patron was arrested for assault on a police officer and drinking in public.

Of course, that’s just the skeleton of what happened. (Also: describing what happened to the arrested man as “falling out of his wheelchair” is mighty generous.)

Reports with more details are beginning to float in, however — WTOP’s Adam Tuss quotes a Metro source who claims that the man’s blood-alcohol level at the time of his arrest was .30. (Point of reference: that’s more than three times the legal limit allowed while operating a vehicle in D.C.) Rend Smith, on the other hand, talks to an officer at the Metropolitan Police Department, who believes that the Transit Police went too far. “I don’t believe I would’ve removed him from the wheelchair,” the cop told Smith, while also noting that the transit cops risked “positional asphyxiation” by restraining him on the ground for so long.