Next to the NYPD I Look Like Mother Teresa

Look, I hate people who make balloon-animals. Because there's nothing I hate more in life than a happy kid. In fact, I'm going to spend the 4th running around the mall popping balloons and making little kids cry. But, I know the difference between just being a bastard and being a menace to society, and that difference is this:

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. 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. [...] "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.

Via Nobody's Business.