The man was walking down a street in the southern Italian city of Genoa on a Sunday evening.
He was holding his discuz, a small white object that is about the size of a pencil eraser, with his left hand.
A young man in a similar situation was stopped and told that he was being stopped by police for the crime of “trying to steal a discuuz”.
The young man had been walking past a car, but police stopped him and asked him if he had any other discs.
“I said no,” he said.
“They just told me to stop and I said I had my discuz.
So, I said ‘yes’ and they said ‘get on your bike’.” The young Italian was not charged.
He had been travelling home with a friend, but was stopped on the street and asked to turn around.
He refused and was told to wait in a police van for an hour.
“Then, they took my discuiz and told me they would call me when they got home,” he told the Italian daily La Repubblica.
“So, I went home and went to sleep.
Then, I woke up the next morning and I saw police officers, telling me to turn my bike around.”
He was taken to Genoa’s regional police station, where he was taken for questioning.
Police then took his bike and left him behind.
He told La Republlica that police officers had told him to turn his bike around before taking him to the station.
“In my mind, I’m going to say I have a discus,” he recalled.
“When they take my bike away, they take it back.”
He did not take any action and was released without charge.
He is now a “fitness junkie” who works out twice a day and “works up a sweat”.
He said the incident had been a “huge wake-up call”.
A man in Italy holds a disc as he waits to cross a busy street in Genoa, Italy, on Monday.
He is pictured holding his own discuz in his right hand, which he had with him on his way to a nearby supermarket to buy groceries.
This is the second time in less than a week that someone has been stopped and asked if they have a bike in their hands, a police official told The Associated Press (AP).
The police chief in Genova, a town about 60km (40 miles) east of Geno, said on Sunday that a woman was stopped by a police officer in a shopping centre in the town’s centre on Sunday night and was searched for a disc.
“She had a bicycle and a disc,” Genova’s police chief, Gianfranco Fusaro, told AP.
Police said in a statement that the woman had refused to turn over her bicycle, and was then taken to the regional police office for questioning, where she was arrested.
Geno is Italy’s most dangerous city and has been hit by a wave of deadly knife attacks.
