A Wisconsin attorney was arrested twice over the weekend after spitting on a teenager during a peaceful march, shoving a college student who was writing protest messages on a sidewalk outside her home and kicking a police officer in the groin, authorities said.
Stephanie Rapkin, 64, was first taken into custody Saturday night after she was caught on video earlier that day parking her car in the middle of a road in an apparent attempt to block an anti-racism rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood.
The woman walked out of the car and got into a verbal altercation with several protesters who were urging her to move the vehicle, according to multiple cellphone videos posted on social media.
Rapkin, who is white, kept shouting back and then spat on a black protester who police identified as a "juvenile male."
The woman was arrested and booked, but she wasn't held that night because of jail restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to police.
The lawyer apparently couldn't stay out of trouble for one day and was busted again on Sunday afternoon.
In an incident that was also partly caught on video, Rapkin was seen in a heated argument with 21-year-old student Joe Friedman, who was using chalk to write messages against racism just outside her property.
One of the messages was a reference to her previous arrest and read, "I spit on a child. How dare you?" Friedman, who was recording the video himself, confronted her about Saturday's incident.
"You spit on a 17-year-old kid," he told her after she called him "incredibly stupid."
"I spit on a man who attacked me," Rapkin replied.
As Friedman said that the teenager did not attack her, the woman advanced toward him, "slapped the victim's chest and physically pushed him" according to the video and a news release by the Police Department.
Officers went to Rapkin's home later on Sunday and were met with violence as the woman "became physically resistive" and struck one of the cops in the groin, police said. She was eventually arrested and officials with the Milwaukee County Jail agreed to keep her in custody that night, according to police.
Rapkin was charged with battery, battery to a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
Local community leaders on Monday called for the woman to be disbarred and charged with a hate crime, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"If we, as Milwaukee County, are going to treat racism as the crisis it is, we must make sure that law enforcement and our criminal justice system look at these types of incidents through a racially motivated lens," Shorewood Schools Superintendent Bryan Davis told the paper.
The investigation is ongoing.
