© Eric Peters Auto
Greg Chang, 28, was at Roebling Sporting Club on North 8th Street near Roebling Street this past Saturday afternoon with a friend when the incident happened. He says the two were chatting and trading jokes, and Chang, a U.S. History teacher at a public school in the neighborhood, made one about Trump: "The offending joke, I believe, was 'If Donald Trump becomes president, I would pursue an early retirement—life in federal prison. Lucky for me I know the two parts of the country a President Trump would spend most of his time in: the Beltway and the City."
Chang and his friend continued to chat, but unbeknownst to them, someone had overheard his joke and called the cops. "The cops showed up, they actually physically came into the bar and asked me to step outside," Chang said, noting at least one sergeant and one officer were on the scene at around 5 p.m. "I stepped outside, and literally the first question out of the sergeant's mouth is, 'Did you make any comments about Donald Trump today?"
The cops took Chang's driver's license, and told him they needed to take him to the 94th Precinct and interview him quickly—Chang figured he'd explain the joke and be set free in a few minutes, so he went with them. He waited at the station for over three hours before anyone even met with him.
"After about three hours of waiting, two gentlemen walk in. One is a Secret Service agent, the other is a detective," Chang told Gothamist. "I told them the joke. They questioned me for another hour." Chang says the cops kept asking him if he'd said something more threatening. "That was the most damning thing that could have been interpreted as a threat. They're really pushing it, like, 'Could you have possibly said anything else anyone thought was dangerous enough to call 911?'"
Eventually, the cops told Chang he could leave, but not before they had him sign waivers that would permit them to look through his medical records and talk to his therapist to see if he was a mental health threat. But when Chang asked for his driver's license back, the sergeant who took him into custody at the bar told him they lost it. The sergeant also told Chang he should consider the whole experience a lesson.
"At that point I lost my temper," Chang said. "What is the lesson I'm supposed to take away here? That it's normal for the NYPD to hold someone, not arrest someone, for hours on end without an explanation? A reminder that the NYPD is famous for losing evidence? Is the lesson that I'm not allowed to talk politics or make jokes in public?"
Chang finally made it out of the precinct around 10 p.m. with a temporary paper license and a form for the DMV. He's still not sure who called in the threat, though he says he was speaking so quietly only someone sitting next to him or his friend could have overheard him. He went back to the bar Monday night and spoke with one of the bartenders who'd been working on Saturday.
"Based on my conversation with him, the cops just picked me up. They didn't take witness statements or talk to [my friend]." The bartender also told him he'd "definitely overheard much worse in the bar than what I said, but had never seen that kind of response before."
Chang was never formally arrested or charged, so none of this went on his record. "At the end of the day this was a waste of everyone's f------ time. My time, the police, Secret Service, because of a hearsay accusation that has no basis in anything, really," he said. The real burn? "I'm most pissed off that they lost my fucking license. I have to lose another Saturday to go to the DMV to get that figured out," he said.
When contacted for comment (and to find out what happened to Chang's license) the NYPD referred Gothamist to the Secret Service. A spokesperson with the Secret Service simply told us, "I can't help you."
Contact the governor's office, the state attorney general and the congressional delegation and tell them the cops "lost" the driver's permit. It will be "found" quickly, I think.