Lawrence resident Joshua York was tased by a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper after the Kansas-North Carolina game on Saturday after he refused to throw away his glass beer bottle. York said the officer never explained that glass bottles weren't allowed downtown and that the situation could have been avoided with better communication.

Joshua York was ready to celebrate.

Kansas University’s men’s basketball team had just defeated North Carolina in the Final Four, and he was heading to downtown Lawrence to join the crowd.

But his chance to join the approximately 20,000 Jayhawk fans on Massachusetts Street ended quickly April 5 when he was tased twice by a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper on hand to assist Lawrence police with crowd control.

York, 32, was walking west on Eighth Street toward Massachusetts Street. He’d brought a bottle of ale from home.

As he neared the crowd, he made eye contact with a few of the 200 on-duty officers.

“I smiled and held up my bottle, to salute them,” York said.

That’s when things went bad. A KHP trooper approached him.

“Immediately he demanded the bottle,” said York. “I said, ‘No,’ thinking that he wanted to prevent alcohol in the streets.”

York, of Lawrence, saw several other people drinking in the street, so he didn’t understand why he was being singled out.

“Without telling me what it was about, (the trooper) just grabbed ahold of the bottle, grabbed dead hold of it, and I didn’t let go,” York said.

Officers weren’t allowing people to carry bottles or cans on Mass. Street that night, only plastic cups. Lt. Mathew Heffley told York he had to get rid of the bottle or leave the area, said Capt. Dek Kruger, KHP troop commander.

“He decided that he didn’t want either one of those options, so that left no options for us. We had to take some sort of action,” Kruger said. “We would’ve been satisfied just removing the bottle.”

Another trooper approached York from behind and took him to the ground, with the help of a Lawrence police officer, Kruger said.

Heffley stunned York with his Taser twice, once in the leg and again in the back, Kruger said.

“He was tased, and he was tased because he was resisting arrest,” Kruger said. “When he was placed on the ground, he was instructed to place his hands behind his back and he was not cooperating. He in fact was physically resisting the arrest.”

Kruger said Heffley used the Taser because it was a “lesser force” than open hand strikes or blows from a baton.

York calls it a “breakdown of communication.”

He said it makes sense officers didn’t want bottles in the crowd, but he said that was never explained to him until after he was stunned.

“I just didn’t know,” York said. “I thought it was about the alcohol.”

York was arrested for disorderly conduct and booked into Douglas County Jail, where he was held for less than two hours before posting a $100 bond. Charges haven’t been filed against him.

More departments are assigning officers Tasers, which stun a suspect so they can be subdued. Lawrence police were recently issued Tasers in a pilot program.