Eric Linsker, a 29-year-old from Brooklyn, an adjunct professor at CUNY, was once known for his “erotic poetry interspersed with expletives aimed at the police,” according to the New York Daily News. That is, until he tangled with the NYPD Saturday night. He is now charged with “assault in the second degree, rioting in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon, resisting arrest and unlawful possession of marijuana,” they report, all stemming from a protest Saturday night that police say turned violent.
Linsker was about to hurl a trashcan from the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge onto a roadway, until a cop ordered him to put the trash can down. Then other protestors allegedly started beating up two police lieutenants, helping Linkser to flee the scene.
“At worst, Eric picked up a garbage can, was told by police to put it down, and did,” said the lawyer, Martin Stoler.
One of the cops sustained a broken nose in the incident, because the cops “were punched by numerous people and kicked in the face and the head, while the group attempted to steal their portable radios and tear away their police identification jackets,” said the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counter-terrorism John Miller.
“Cops said they recovered Linsker’s bag, which contained hammers and a pill bottle of pot — but his hammers were not used in the violence, cops said,” reports the New York Daily News.
From The New York Daily News:
Before his run-in with the law, Linsker was scribbling stanzas about psychedelic sex and disdain for the cops.
“F--- the police/To rise as you/Disappear below current/Interpretations of observations/F--- the police,” he wrote for Adult-Mag, an online publication.
Linsker’s roommate Chris Balmer said the poet’s writing often wrestles with the issues that galvanized some 30,000 protesters Saturday in the wake of decisions by grand juries not to indict the cops who killed Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
“The readings we do in class are pretty weird,” wrote one student on RateMyProfessors. “Agreed upon by most of the class. I mean if you love reading about sex in the most poetically disturbing way possible go for it. We focus on topics that aren't really that important …”
“Linsker was a lauded graduate student in the prestigious writing program at the University of Iowa. He also attended Harvard, and now teaches at Queens College and Baruch College, according to his Facebook profile,” reports New York Daily News.
All of which begs the question: what are we English professors teaching these days?