Rapper atop pole stops traffic in Times Square

[June 29, 2011]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A rapper awaited word Tuesday on whether he would face charges after stopping traffic in Times Square by staging a performance -- from atop a light pole.

"He was rapping to the police officers, rapping to everybody," Jason Krywko, a tourist from Sarasota, Fla., told the New York Post. "He was lifting his shirt up. It was all for attention."

Earlier in the morning, the man had been trying to hand out his own CDs in a store when he got kicked out, witnesses said. He then climbed the pole to try to get his music heard, they said.

The man, dressed in a red polo shirt, khaki shorts and a baseball cap, perched atop the 20-foot pole for more than an hour, negotiating with police officers beneath him.

Onlookers packed the sidewalks, with some clicking photos and others cheering him on. Police set up an inflatable cushion under the pole at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue for fear he would jump.

He finally agreed to come down the ladder around 11:15 a.m. He was handcuffed and taken to Bellevue Hospital for evaluation, a police spokesman said.

Authorities did not release his name, pending possible charges.

[Associated Press]

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