A Brooklyn man says cops stopped him out of the blue while he was walking his dog, threatened to shoot the pet, and then pulled down his pants, leaving him with “nothing but his underwear on” in the middle of the street while they searched him for drugs.
Richard Udovich Jr. is now suing the city in Brooklyn Supreme Court, saying he was humiliated in front of his neighbors over what turned out to be an aspirin in his pocket.
Udovich, 30, was walking to a Bensonhurst Walgreens with his pooch on April 28, 2015, when the cops converged on him, pantsed him, and then slammed him into a light pole to cuff him after finding the pill in his pocket, the suit claims.
“He was set up by a childhood friend!” his attorney Joseph Giaramita told The Post. “The guy gives him this thing, and then suddenly cops are on him!”
Making matters worse, he says, the stop-and-strip unfolded in front of several of Udovich’s gawking neighbors, the suit claims.
The red-faced man was then locked in a cell, given no access to a phone, and forced to sleep on the floor until he was arraigned on felony charges of selling a controlled substance, according to the filing.
“We went through this whole rigmarole for months before I was finally like, let’s test this pill, and insisted they did a lab test,” Giaramita said, adding incredulously, “They tried to offer him a felony plea!”
At his final court appearance, a prosecutor admitted a lab report had confirmed that the small pill in his pocket was aspirin, and the case was dismissed, the complaint reads.
The suit seeks an unspecified amount, citing malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.
Lawyers for the city declined comment.