University Police officers arrested a 35-year-old man for disorderly conduct after responding to a reported fight-in-progress outside Fowl Play just after the Dinkytown bar closed Thursday night.
According to the police report and witness accounts, the suspect, who appeared drunk and slurred his speech, had approached a bar patron who wore a T-shirt that read “male escort service.”
The suspect repeatedly suggested the man was a male prostitute, and asked him to accompany him to the Gopher Motel, where the suspect told bystanders he lived.
While the man’s friends tried to pull him away, the suspect told them he and the man were close friends and that they were leaving together.
At this point, Wayne Christopherson, a friend of the T-shirted man, stepped in and began exchanging words with the suspect.
The suspect grabbed Christopherson, 23, by the throat and choked him. The suspect then struck the man in the face with his fist and “clawed” at his face.
Christopherson said the suspect told him he was a “gangster” and that he had a gun, but never revealed it and a later search found no gun.
The victim then put the suspect in a headlock. When police arrived, they saw scratches and blood on the victim. After the victim signed a citizen’s arrest for disorderly conduct, the police attempted to serve the ticket on the suspect, who refused to accept it.
The police then took the suspect to Hennepin County Jail. On the way, the suspect told the police officer he would have the officer fired and that his cousin would “take care of everything.”
When jail personnel searched his briefcase, they found and destroyed a crack pipe that was wrapped in a Twins home run hanky.
“I thought it was kind of amusing, but childish,” Christopherson said. “You’d think somebody would have something better to do than sit outside a bar and hound kids when they come out.”

In other police news:
ù Minneapolis police took a report from a woman living near Third Street and Third Avenue Southeast who said four or five women kicked and then stabbed her.
When police arrived at the scene at 12:48 a.m. on Thursday, they found the victim, who had a stab wound on her back, and her unharmed child.
Minneapolis detectives are investigating the case.

ù Khoury’s Market, a corner grocery store at 1523 Como Ave., was robbed of $950 on Thursday night.
According to police reports, a man told the clerk to lie down, then took the money from the cash register.
The store was also robbed at gunpoint in December of 1997, when the perpetrator made off with contents of the store’s safe and some cartons of cigarettes.