ALBANY -- The city has settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with a man who accused police of pepper-spraying him, striking him with a baton and wrestling him to the ground based on a vague description of a drug dealer reportedly seen in the area an hour earlier.

Jeffrie Lee Moore and a handful of others were standing on a landing outside 1 Lincoln Square, a public housing complex on Morton Avenue, around 9:30 p.m. June 23, 2007, when two officers assigned to the now-defunct Strategic Deployment Unit approached.

Those facts -- and the fact that Moore did not have any drugs on him when he was arrested and was not charged with any drug-related crimes -- were not in dispute. But what happened after that remained in contention until both sides agreed to settle the lawsuit for $39,000 late last month.

The two officers -- Tracy Condon and Kevin Meehan -- alleged that Moore, then 48, became belligerent and combative when they asked him if he lived in the building and for him to produce identification.

Just before 8:30 p.m., the officers had been dispatched to investigate a report of a tall black man in a brown T-shirt and with Afro-style haircut selling drugs in front of neighboring 3 Lincoln Square. An update a few minutes later indicated that the man was walking up Morton Avenue toward Elizabeth Street.

Seeing nothing when they arrived, the officers went about their duties.

An hour later, they saw Moore -- who is tall and African-American but, according to his booking photo, was wearing a light-colored T-shirt -- standing outside the building. Moore, who in a deposition said he had emerged from the building just minutes earlier after recuperating for several days from having been hit by a car, conceded he reacted angrily when the officers approached and asked him for ID. "I said to him, 'Can you tell me why you're asking me?' By the time I got to 'asking me,' I was grabbed," Moore said in his deposition.

A former counselor at the state-run Tryon Residential Center, the now-closed Fulton County youth prison, Moore acknowledged knowing how to break free from the handholds Meehan tried to place him in.

Meehan and Condon contended Moore swung at Meehan and shoved him, prompting the officer to stumble backward down a flight of stairs. Moore's attorney, Terence Kindlon, said his client denies that.

At that point, the officers testified, Meehan pepper-sprayed Moore to try to subdue him. The officer then took him to the ground with a leg sweep. While Meehan acknowledged drawing his collapsible baton, he denied ever striking Moore with it -- as one witness alleged.

Moore, who was not seriously hurt, was charged with resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration, both misdemeanors, and disorderly conduct, a violation.

City Court Judge Thomas K. Keefe dismissed the charges five months later, finding the allegations in the charging documents failed to meet legal standards.

In April of the following year, Moore sued, alleging false arrest and imprisonment, malicious prosecution, excessive force and assault and battery.

"He was the victim of a misidentification," Kindlon said, adding that the whole incident stemmed from the officers acting on a vague, hour-old description of a tall black man standing outside a building -- a description he said didn't even match his client that well. "First of all, that's like saying that a penguin was seen at the South Pole," he said. "It was like saying a man was seen selling drugs is what it really amounts to."

John Liguori, an outside attorney who represented the city, declined to comment beyond noting that neither the city nor the officers admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which was finalized earlier this month.

Reach Carleo-Evangelist at 454-5445 or jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com