On a hot August day, New Yorker Mark Moody decided to take a smoking break.  He opened the window, then sat on the ledge with his feet dangling while smoking.  There’s nothing wrong with this, in theory or in practice.  However, when the NYPD drove past, then jumped out of the car, they were acting on a good impulse with horrible implications.  Police mistook Mark Moody’s smoking break as a suicide attempt since he was sitting in his open window.

Here’s where the story gets goofy.  Mark Moody wasn’t eight stories off the ground; Mark Moody was sitting 12 feet off the ground in a second-story window.  It’d take a Herculean effort to die from 12 feet off the ground.  Moody even explained this to the police, saying how he smoked on the ledge to prevent getting smoke in his apartment.

When the officer asked Moody, “Are you about to commit suicide?“, Moody responded. “If I was going to commit suicide, this would be a pretty dumb place to do it. If I jumped from here, I’d just sprain my ankle.”

That’s when three ambulances and four patrol cars show up.  Unbeknownst to Moody, a 40-year-old trial lawyer, a cop had successfully broken into his apartment, grabbed him, and threw him to the floor of his apartment, arresting him and dragging him off to Beth Israel Medical Center for a psychiatric evaluation.  The psychiatrist on duty apologized to Moody and quickly discharged him.  Just as quickly, Moody filed a $400,000 lawsuit against the city.

Tags: smoke break mistaken for suicide attempt, New York City, New York, Mark Moody, man sits in window for smoking break, police arrest man for taking a smoking break, smoking break confused for suicide attempt, Peck Slip, unusual mistakes, law and order, Beth Israel Medical Center

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