Moments earlier, the police had received a report of a burglary in an apartment just across Bennett Avenue from the park. A man said that two intruders had just left his apartment. “He pointed to an individual running up a hill in Fort Tryon Park and identified him as one of the intruders,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman. The chase led to Mr. Vansintjan.

As he was being held on the street, he said, “they told me someone had reported the theft of a Macy’s bag.” He protested that he had been shopping and that he was on his way to the Cloisters. Moreover, he said, his hands were turning purple from the tight squeeze of the handcuffs. They were loosened slightly. The officers suggested that Mr. Vansintjan, who is 5 feet 10 and weighs 130 pounds, had resisted arrest, he said.

The friends waiting for him were astonished to see Mr. Vansintjan surrounded by eight police officers. “They came over and the police told them to get back,” he said. “I said, ‘Those are my friends.’ An officer asked me, ‘Oh, are they your accomplices?’ I said, ‘No, we were going to the museum.’ ”

The man who reported the break-in was driven past Mr. Vansintjan and identified him as a burglar. At the station house, Mr. Vansintjan was unshackled and taken to an interrogation room. “A detective asked me to tell my side of things, and said, ‘If you are honest, we will be easier on you’,” Mr. Vansintjan said. He said he was not told of his right to a lawyer, or to remain silent.

“After I told him what had happened, the detective said, ‘You know, what the other guy is saying doesn’t match up with your story,’ ” Mr. Vansintjan said, an old ruse used to trick people into admissions. “I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ”

While this was going on, the man who reported the burglary told the police that there had been no break-in, and that people were out to get him, according to Mr. Browne. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital, Mr. Browne said.