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to be a dais guest at.”
Okay. They book him. It takes 40 minutes to book him. At that moment half of the cops in the 6th Precinct were dressed as gypsies and shoplifters -- they were all in disguise, as decoys, you know. This was a funny place to be in. Meanwhile, this guy, who was obstreperous and probably somewhat under the influence of liquor, begins to yell; and the cop who's taking the information from him -- he's dressed like a gypsy -- says to him; “You keep that up and I'm going to take you into the backroom.”
Now what was interesting was my own mental reaction. Here am I a civil libertarian, and yet I'm so angry, I say to myself; “You know? If he does, I'm not going to stop him.” (laughs) But of course he didn't.
They book him They drive me down to 100 Centre Street, because now he has to go to night court. They're rushing me through this thing. The cop says to me at the desk: “Listen, I'll put this on the wire so that the press will know about it.” So I said, “No, I don't want to do that. I'm not interested in that. He said, “Take it from me; I'm going to put it on the wire.” So I didn't say, “no.”
He puts it on the wire: “Congressman Koch arrests panhandler who threatens him in the park.”
So we get to 100 Centre Street and now he has to be booked again by the assistant DA. We go up to the complaint room, and they recognize me, and I said, “Listen, I hope you can rush this thing through a little, “because it's about 7:15 now. He said, “Oh,
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