Power-Dressing Man Leaves Trail of Destruction

BERLIN - A German man who told police that dressing well made him feel "stronger" demonstrated the limits of the theory by destroying his own flat, smashing his neighbor's car and wrecking the police van sent to collect him.

Police in the western city of Bielefeld said officers called to a disturbance found the 33-year-old in the wreckage of his apartment — furniture overturned, glass everywhere — immaculately dressed in a suit and tie.

Asked why he had trashed his home, the man explained that wearing a suit made him feel powerful. He then headbutted the window of a neighbor's car, police said, "to demonstrate the point."

Officers bundled him into a patrol van, where he continued to make his case, kicking and headbutting until the interior required repairs. Police described him as cooperative throughout, in his fashion.

"He was polite the whole time," a police spokesman said. "It was just that everything he politely touched broke."

He was taken to a police cell, where he was allowed to keep the suit — the officers deciding, one imagines, that it was part of the problem only when combined with property.

The man faces charges of criminal damage and, police said, "a considerable bill." No estimate was given of the suit's future influence on his conduct.