David's excess baggage
 
BY LINDSAY FABER
STAFF WRITER
March 7, 2004
Newsday

The songwriter reportedly beat his drug demons years ago, but yesterday's arrest raises doubt.

Famed rock-and-roller David Crosby was arrested early yesterday after a hotel maid found weapons and marijuana in a suitcase he'd accidentally left behind during a short stay in midtown Manhattan, police said.

Crosby, 62, already had checked out of the DoubleTree Suites Hotel at 1568 Broadway but returned around 1 a.m. to recover a piece of luggage he'd left behind, police said. However, a maid cleaning his room already had found the bag, and police had been notified of its contents: a .45-caliber gun, three magazines of ammunition, a hunting knife, a folding knife, a pocket knife and a small bag of marijuana with rolling papers, court officials said.

Crosby called the hotel to say he'd left the bag in his room, court officials said.

When he returned for it, police were waiting and charged him there with criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of marijuana.

Crosby was arraigned just before 1 p.m. yesterday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where Justice Robert Straus set bail at $3,500, despite defense attorney Daniel Parker's request to waive bail and release the musician on his own recognizance.

Crosby, who appeared tired in court, wore loose, dark pants and a T-shirt reading, "A man and his truck it's a beautiful thing." He left
via a side exit and is next scheduled to appear in court May 19. Parker would not comment.

Crosby is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his roles as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the Byrds. He was in New York for a Thursday night performance at B.B. King's Blues Club in Times Square with his newest band, CPR. The group had played in Wayne, N.J., Friday night, before Crosby's arrest.

Reached yesterday, James Raymond, Crosby's son and a member of that band, said the arrest would not halt the nationwide CPR tour, which was headed to Glenside, Pa., last night.

"I'm not going to comment on anything to do with this case," Raymond said. "But we're still going ahead with the tour."

Crosby was arrested several times on charges involving drugs and weapons before recovering from a 20-year drug addiction in the mid-1980s while serving time in a Texas prison. He was paroled in 1986.

Sean Collard, the assistant general manager of the DoubleTree Suites Hotel, near 47th Street, would not comment about the findings in the luggage.