Fortunately they didn't taser him, so we can't call this a police brutality story, but it is a sobering thought that people can get pulled in for an ID check just for looking old, weird and unfashionable.
Bob Dylan had been taking an afternoon stroll as a way to relax before his appearance that night at the local stadium, when a resident of Long Branch, New Jersey (about a two-hour drive south of New York City) complained of a man 'acting suspiciously’
The incident began at 5 p.m. when the unnamed resident dialed 911 and claimed a man was wandering around the low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront, looking at houses.
Police arrived in the form of a 22-year-old female officer, who got out of her squad car, demanded to see some ID from the 68 year old ‘scraggly-looking’male.
Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said this past Friday, “I don’t think she was familiar with his entire body of work” – which could easily be considered a classic example of understatement in this case.
A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley explained.
Mr. Dylan later said he assumed one or the other officers would at least recognize the name if not the face, but instead the first officer ordered him into the back of her squad car and took him to his hotel to check his story (as per New Jersey law, any civilian who is placed into the back of a police squad car, must be handcuffed first and remain so encumbered for the duration of the trip). The reaction of the staff of the hotel when the officer asked about the old guy in her backseat was so dramatic, she radioed the police station to ask her older colleagues if any of them knew who Bob Dylan was.
Meanwhile, that smug Neocon arse-licking sleazeball Justin Webb, the Beeb's man in America for the last eight years — my guess is they put him in to ensure no embarrassing questions were asked on the 9:00 News after 9/11 — has been packed off back to Blighty where he's suffering from Returning Expat Syndrome. Says Justin:
Now back in the UK I find myself utterly at sea - I say hello to people I pass in the street. They lunge on, muttering insults. We'll get used to it. But we will never forget the kindness of America. In Swindon buying a car the other day (yes, life has changed) the conversation turned to a familiar theme but one that endlessly fascinates me - the relative peaceableness of the American life, guns and all. Too many Brits seriously think that America is violent. It isn't. Most America lives are free of violence and the threat of it in a way no life in Swindon can be. Why that's true is a subject all of its own (religion, gun ownership, moral fibre, space, social cohesiveness?) and one worthy of a future study.
By the way, we bought a large second-hand American car and we will pay the extra costs with pride... Have a nice day!
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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