Alec Baldwin had another angry run-in with someone, except this time it turned into a hate crime investigation

Tuxedo-clad bear Alec Baldwin continues to be poked by the abusive handlers of the world, though his latest attack unfortunately goes beyond tussles with stewardesses or his own daughter that can be ameliorated with SNL skits and YouTube mash-ups. Baldwin is currently under investigation by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force for an incident involving a New York Post photographer, G.N. Miller, a retired NYPD detective who told his former colleagues on the force that Baldwin called him a “coon,” a “crackhead,” and a “drug dealer,” after Baldwin had one of his characteristic run-ins with paparazzi outside his apartment, and reacted in a less than enthusiastic manner to questions regarding a recent lawsuit filed against his wife. Both Baldwin and the photographer have registered harassment complaints against each other that are still being investigated by police.

Baldwin immediately, flatly denied the allegations of using any racial slurs, saying the claim is "one of the most outrageous things I've heard in my life," and calling it “magical thinking” and a “new low” on the Post’s part in its frequent attempts to bait him—attempts that this time included Miller deliberately bumping into him with his camera. He explained to Gothamist that Miller’s allegations of racist insults only surfaced after the fact, and not when the police, whom Baldwin called himself, arrived to take their statements about the altercation.

TMZ reports that the audiotape of the confrontation supports Baldwin’s story, saying it doesn’t contain Baldwin saying any sort of racial epithet—just old-fashioned, that’s-so-Baldwin statements like telling Miller to “suck my dick” and saying to reporter Tara Palmeri, “I want you to choke to death.” Nevertheless, and as you might expect, the Post is sticking to its story, throwing Baldwin on its cover without so much as a pun, all to communicate just how serious they believe the situation is.

Meanwhile, the incident has spurred New York State Senator Malcolm Smith to call for Baldwin to be blacklisted from all film and television projects “until he seeks help” (a call for integrity that might be taken a little more seriously, were it not from a guy constantly under investigation for some form of fraud). And of course, Tracy Morgan has also been called upon to defend Baldwin, as both a person who's been through these sorts of accusations before and a black man who knows Alec Baldwin, telling a Charlotte-area radio show that he’s never heard Baldwin utter anything racist, but admitting that, “if he called somebody a ‘coon,’ he should apologize.” Of course, he adds, “that goes for anybody,” white guy or otherwise, given that Morgan believes that, as an insult, “’Coon’ is played out.’”

As with all past incidents involving Alec Baldwin versus a world that only exists to exhaust him, the first casualty was Baldwin’s Twitter feed: After posting, then deleting, several tweets about the incident in which he called Miller “the ex-crackhead ‘photographer’” and scoffed at his claims of being “ex-NYPD,” Baldwin closed up shop on yet another Twitter account, posting enough individual tweets to get this one to 10,000, then announcing, “I think I might take some time to do other things in this world.” The rest of the world is hereby on notice to look out for Alec Baldwin and maybe consider leaving him alone.