Cops: Man, Seemingly Sozzled, & Broomstick Removed from Street

Clutching a horizontal broomstick in the middle of West Avenue, near Tilley Pond Park as if to stop traffic, a 22-year-old New York City man was approached by a police sergeant, according to a police report.

It was midnight, early on Friday.

"Oh, thank God!" the man yelled when he saw the officer, who told him to get out of the roadway and put down the stick, the police report said.

The sergeant asked the man what he was doing in the middle of the street brandishing a broomstick at approaching vehicles.

"Well, what would you do?" the young man replied.

Neither the officer's response nor any purported chain of reasoning, if any, undertaken by the young man to reach his reply were noted in the police report.

Instead, the report said that man smelled strongly of an alcoholic beverage.

The man, Jason Rosenthal, a student at New York University who gave his address as Sullivan Street in New York City, told the sergeant he was lost and was trying to get back home.

He had attended a concert somewhere in Connecticut — he said he didn't know just where — and was trying to get back home but had become lost. He couldn't explain why he hadn't called a friend or relative to give him a ride home.

Rosenthal was charged with breach of peace and reckless use of a roadway by a pedestrian. He was initially held on $500 bond, but a family member bonded him out. Rosenthal is scheduled to appear May 19 in state Superior Court in Stamford.

The information in this report comes entirely from police and is an allegation not  proven in court.