A 54-year-old man died in police custody after he ran from cops who were trying to stop him from boozing up in a Harlem park, authorities said Saturday.
The man, whose identity wasn’t immediately released, was in Riverside Park at West 137th Street and Riverside Drive around 10 p.m. Friday when cops saw him drinking alcohol and tried to stop him, a police source said.
“He ran from them,” said the source, who added the man had a knife of indeterminate length on him — which is why he might have bolted.
When police caught up to him after a brief chase, he was having trouble breathing, cops said.
Police called an ambulance but the man couldn’t be saved.
“Once the ambulance arrived he went into cardiac arrest,” the source said.
The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is probing the incident.
It wasn’t clear which unit the cops who were trying to stop the man were from, but the NYPD recently launched a quality of life policing initiative to deal with minor infractions cited in 311 calls.
The “Q-Team” program, announced by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch in February, kicked off in six precincts in April. The 30th precinct where the park is located was not one of the precincts in the pilot program.
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