“No Dancing as per the Kevin Bacon Act of 1984.”

There’s always a part of me that wants to give cops the benefit of the doubt. When I read stories like this, I wonder what the rest of the story is.

But really, why hassle a couple people dancing on a subway platform:

Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.
“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”

It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”

“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

The cops asked for ID, but when Stern could only produce a credit card, the officers ordered the couple to go with them — even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature.
When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Ninja cops?

Why would you need more than one ninja cop? Perhaps they were expecting Chuck Norris to start break dancing.

The cops supposedly tacked Hess and charged them both with impeding traffic.

The platform had around three people on it.

They are suing, of course.

There’s got to be more to this story. What do you think? Who’s most likely at fault: overzealous cops or rowdy 55 year old dentists?

Photo Credit: John Morton