'Terror Balloon' Bust is a Bruiser

[Bond]

July 2, 2006 -- A Manhattan face-painter and balloon-animal maker said overzealous cops tackled him off his bike, shoved two guns to his head and threw him in the slammer for more than four hours - all because his misplaced balloon pump looked like a bomb.

Alexander "Sasha" Alhovsky said the takedown occurred in front of dozens of horrified children on Thursday at about 5.30 p.m. outside an Upper East Side playground.

"They thought I was a terrorist," Alhovsky, 36, said yesterday.

The previous Sunday, Alhovsky said, he left a rainbow-striped balloon pump in a Starbucks on 66th Street and First Avenue - and a worker called cops.

Four days later, he was cycling home from Central Park - where he's plied his trade outside the zoo entrance for 15 years - when about eight cops jumped on him from behind, he claimed.

"There was a gun in my face and another on the back of my neck," he said. "They were screaming, 'Get off your f- - -ing bike, you f- - -' . . . They were dragging me around."

Alhovsky was taken to the 19th Precinct station house.

Eventually, a plainclothes officer came into the room with a photo of the $850 electric air pump he had purchased online.

"I told them what I did for a living and that it was just a pump," he said. Alhovsky was then released.

Alhovsky said he wants an apology from cops.

"It appears the officers took prudent steps to handle what may have been a dangerous situation," Police Chief Michael Collins said in a written statement.

From our friends at the New York Post.