An East Point man said he was forcibly removed from a City Council meeting and arrested for laughing.
"It's not a crime to giggle," said Dustin Drabot, the man arrested. "I don't even remember laughing to be honest with you. I smirked and other people in the audience laughed. But I was in the front row."
Drabot said the incident started when Mayor Earnestine Pittman walked out of the meeting before it was adjourned. The audience laughed, he said, at the spectacle of another meeting ending before it was properly adjourned.
Drabot said Mayor Pro Tem Marcel Reed took over the meeting and said he would order anyone who laughed removed.
"If I did laugh it wasn't a loud obstructionist laugh," he said. "It was a 'Huh, hahaha' under my breath."
Reed said Drabot was persistently disruptive, heckled and laughed during the meeting.
Drabot said police used inappropriate force to subdue him.
Police would not officially discuss the incident. But a source told Channel 2's Tom Jones that Drabot disrupted the meeting, put a hole in the wall and broke two officers' glasses while they removed him.
Drabot said that isn't true and plans to plead not guilty when the case goes to cour
WSBTV
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