By Tom deignan

JERSEY City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy is vowing to fight back following his arrest this past weekend outside a family pub in New Jersey.

Healy, the son of Irish immigrants, is defending his actions and blasting the arresting officer.

“I know who he is and I’m not going to take this,” Healy said of the police officer who arrested him at 2 a.m. following an altercation outside of Barry’s Tavern in Bradley Beach, a bar which is owned by the mayor’s sister.

The officer has been identified as Terry Browning.

Healy’s mother came from Longford and met his Kerry-born father in New Jersey.

On Tuesday, Healy held a press conference and told the packed room that he was simply trying to help resolve a situation involving a woman who did not want her boyfriend to drive home. Then, the police showed up.

“Without cause or provocation, the police officer grabbed my arm, threw me to the ground and handcuffed me,” said Healy, who served as Hudson County assistant prosecutor and former chief Jersey City municipal judge before be-coming mayor in 2004.

Healy said the officer made him lay face down on the ground while his hands were cuffed behind his back. Officer Browning also maced Healy, according to the mayor.

“During the incident my wife was shoved by the police to the ground whereby she sustained injuries to her ankle and leg. While immobilized by several police officers, the officer who handcuffed me asked another officer for mace and proceeded to spray me in both eyes,” said the mayor, who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The Monmouth County prosecutor’s office has reportedly started an investigation into the incident. Healy has said he is weighing filing his own criminal charges against the arresting officer.

This is not the first time Healy has found himself in trouble. He survived a bruising campaign in which nearly a dozen people ran to fill the vacancy after Mayor Glenn Cunningham died in office.

At one point during the campaign, an embarrassing photo of Healy naked and unconscious after a rumored night of drinking was posted on the Internet. When asked about the incident in an interview with the Irish Voice in 2005, Healy chalked the posting of the photo up to Jersey City politics as usual.

These incidents have marred what would otherwise be an impressive rise from the Irish working class. The fourth of five children, Healy attended Villanova University. He helped to pay for school by working as an ironworker with Local 45 Ironworker’s Union.

After Villanova in 1972 he went to Seton Hall’s School of Law. Healy then supported himself by tending bar in Jersey City.

Bar work was not new to the Healy family. In fact, Healy’s father ran a bar for a number of years. Tragically, however, the father was killed when he was struck with a bat while breaking up a fight. Healy was just five at the time, too young to comprehend the loss.

In his interview with the Voice, Healy recalled, “All I knew was that my father was dead and he was killed.”

When Healy was born it was his father who spelled his son’s name in a rather unusual way.

“He said it was the Gaelic spelling,” Mayor Healy told the Irish Voice with a laugh last year.

Healy has since credited his mother for holding the family together, as they continued living in the apartment over the bar.

“She did everything,” said Healy. “We had no money but we ate better than anyone in the area.”

Many of the Irish immigrants of Healy’s parents’ generation have either moved out or passed on. But Healy and others have been working to preserve the city’s Irish heritage.

There was an Irish festival in the city last September, and the city formed its first Ancient Order of Hibernians chapter three years ago.

Healy has also talked about working with the Jersey City Irish community to erect a Famine monument on the city’s famed waterfront.

For now, however, Healy has another battle on his hands. The charges filed against him on Saturday carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Healy’s wife was also nursing wounds suffered during Saturday’s incident, including a bruised finger. As of now, the officer involved in the dust-up with Healy has not commented.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)