|
'Terror Balloon' Bust Is a Bruiser By Heather Gilmore
Alexander "Sasha" Alhovsky said the takedown occurred in front of dozens of horrified children on Thursday at about 5.30 p.m. outside an Upper East Side playground. "They thought I was a
terrorist," Alhovsky, 36, said
ROUGHED UP: Sasha Alhovsky
yesterday.
Four days later, he was cycling home from Central Park - where he's plied his trade outside the zoo entrance for 15 years - when about eight cops jumped on him from behind, he claimed. "There was a gun in my face and another on the back of my neck," he said. "They were screaming, 'Get off your f- - -ing bike, you f- - -' . . . They were dragging me around." Alhovsky was taken to the 19th Precinct station house. Eventually, a plainclothes officer came into the room with a photo of the $850 electric air pump he had purchased online. "I told them what I did for a living and that it was just a pump," he said. Alhovsky was then released. Alhovsky said he wants an apology from cops. "It appears the officers took prudent steps to handle what may have been a dangerous situation," Police Chief Michael Collins said in a written statement. Cops
Explode "Suspicious Box" at Courthouse By Julie Kay Authorities evacuated the courthouses Monday due to a bomb scare. The Miami Police bomb squad responded and destroyed the box, but it may have contained evidence from a just-decided case. The James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building and the David W. Dyer Federal Building both were evacuated at about 2:30 p.m. for an hour or so on Monday. Hundreds of attorneys and courthouse staffers were ushered out of the buildings by federal marshals wearing yellow vests. They were directed to the street in front of the Federal Detention Center while the bomb squad did its work. Federal judges and magistrates were taken out of the building separately and taken to an undisclosed location. "A special robot went over to the box, and it went kaboom," said Mark Schnapp, a partner at Greenberg Traurig in Miami who was at the U.S. Attorney's office when the building was evacuated. But according to two lawyers who were present during the bomb scare and did not want to be named, it turned out that the box contained papers and evidence left on the sidewalk by a federal agent. The two lawyers said the evidence was from a criminal case in which a verdict had just been reached. That evidence included fake guns and wiretap equipment. Lt. Bill Schwartz, a spokesman for the Miami Police Department, confirmed that the box left between the Miami Dade College campus and the James Lawrence King courthouse contained papers. But he said he had no details about the nature of the papers or who left them there. "Someone accidentally put something down," Schwartz said. "We felt the need to evacuate the buildings." Alberto Hidalgo, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Miami, confirmed that the box was blown up by the police bomb squad but said he had no information about what was in the box. Matt Dates, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, declined to comment on what the box contained. "We don't talk about security matters," he said. If the box did contain evidence in the criminal case, it's unclear how the loss of the evidence may affect any appeal. Some observers found humor in the situation. "That's smoking-gun evidence," said Miami criminal defense attorney David O. Markus, "just not in the way that the agent was hoping for."
|
A
Manhattan face-painter and balloon-animal maker said overzealous
cops tackled him off his bike, shoved two guns to his head and threw
him in the slammer for more than four hours - all because his
misplaced balloon pump looked like a bomb. |
A Feast
|
