Eric Burns, NOT pictured, plays dreamy police officers on soap operas like All My Children and As The World Turns. To unwind, he sometimes likes to spend some time relaxing at a club — say, after a few cognacs and four shots of vodka, as was apparently the case one night in August at Club Mansion. Then, around 4:50 am (!), some real cops came along and things took a decidedly unsexy turn, police told the Times:

That account stated that Mr. Burns was unreasonable and violent toward the officers, choking one officer and striking two officers as they attempted to handcuff him; that two of the officers also had to be treated for injuries, one of them for “human bite marks” and the other, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, for a concussion and cuts...

Burns, who has no criminal record, is filing a claim against the city alleging police brutality, saying cops "overreacted and manhandled him by knocking him to the ground, handcuffing him, punching him, beating him with batons and spraying him with Mace when he kept asking loudly what it was he did wrong."

He has retained the attorney for Michael Mineo, the man now mounting a credible case against New York cops for sodomy on a Brooklyn subway platform. The drinking by Burns and likely witnesses will make it tough for the Howard University graduate to mount a successful case — but if his "multiple contusions and deep bruises" could certainly help.