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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Man Says It Wasn’t a Terrorist Threat

BROOKLYN (CN) - A Long Island man claims police illegally arrested him after he made an expletive-laden phone call to City Hall, threatening to "blow the f-ing windows" out of it "with a f-ing shotgun."

Michael Olson sued Nassau County, the Town of North Hempstead and their jails, on Jan. 5 in Federal Court.

Olson says he got "irate" on Oct. 9, 2013 when town workers dropped branches onto his garden as they removed a tree by a public sidewalk. He says he called 311 and asked the town to "stop the workers from violating his property," but got no response.

Olson claims he then saw a worker who "trampled upon the garden of the home and was about to urinate behind the porch."

"In frustration," he says in the lawsuit, he called City Hall again and said: "I have a good mind to go over to that f**king office in Manhasset and threaten it with a f**cking shotgun and blow the f**cking windows out of it. I'm tired of your lip service."

He claims the town "purposely mischaracterized and misreported the words and intentions of the plaintiff, erroneously reporting it to be 'terrorist threat,'" though he had no history of making terrorist threats.

He was arrested and held without bail for 12 days, Olson says. He says the court reduced his felony charge to misdemeanor aggravated harassment.

He seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations, false arrest, false imprisonment and trespass.

He is represented by Evan Sarzin of New York City.

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