Man goes for a smoke on window ledge, gets arrested (cops decided he was suicidal)

[The Straight Story]

A pair of blundering cops mistook a downtown man's cigarette break for a suicide attempt, a lawsuit claims.

A lawyer enjoying a puff on the sill of his second-floor apartment window says he was wrestled to the floor by cops who hauled him off to the loony bin.

Mark Moody said he was taking his usual nicotine break on the window ledge of his Peck Slip home on a hot August day with a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone in the other, a scant 12 feet off the ground.

He was shocked when a police car rolled up and two cops jumped out.


Are you about to commit suicide?" one cop asked.

"If I was going to commit suicide, this would be a pretty dumb place to do it," the 40-year-old trial lawyer scoffed. "If I jumped from here, I'd just sprain my ankle."

But the officers, who never said what prompted their concern, insisted Moody come downstairs.

...

Moody, who The Post found still takes his cigarette breaks sitting in his open window, sued the city and the police officers for $400,000 in damages on Dec. 8 in Manhattan federal court.

"I wasn't doing anything," he said. "Maybe it should be a crime to smoke a cigarette, but at the moment it's not."


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/pane_in_the_butt_vuYLCQZ7Vo5RVC7pyzNYMJ#ixzz18ZqxH4ao

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. They picked on the wrong guy - a trial lawyer

[Enrique]

2. my guess...

it didn't really happen that way. :shrug:

[Motown_Johnny]

3. maybe they consider smoking as a method of committing suicide

[postatomic]

4. The only truth in this story

Is that it was "a hot August day". Pretty sure it was hot in August.