DYLAN TO POLICE: “I’M JUST WALKING AROUND LOOKING AT HOUSES”

Cops say: HE HAD NO I.D.!

Asked to accompany law enforcement officers back to his hotel to confirm identity.

“He couldn’t have been nicer.”

…

The blurbs above just about summarize the story that has hit the wires in the last few hours, about an incident that took place back on July 23rd (oddly, exactly one week after Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in Cambridge, MA for disorderly conduct, when police came to his house to check on a reported break-in — and very much at the time that the Gates story was peaking in the media). From the AP:

The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.

[...]

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

“I don’t think she was familiar with his entire body of work,” Woolley said.

[...]

The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name. According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:

“What is your name, sir?” the officer asked.

“Bob Dylan,” Dylan said.

“OK, what are you doing here?” the officer asked.

“I’m on tour,” the singer replied.

A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.

The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” said that he didn’t have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night’s show.

The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.

The officers thanked him for his cooperation.

“He couldn’t have been any nicer to them,” Woolley added.

We’re just hearing about this now because Dylan didn’t rush to any microphone or newspaper to voice his outrage at being stopped, and essentially picked up, for doing nothing more offensive than looking at houses.

What could have been running through Bob’s head? Of-course, in his film Masked and Anonymous his character Jack Fate says to an armed guard, “I’ve got a lot of respect for a gun.” It’s a prudent attitude for anyone to have. Cooperating with the police works out better than confronting them, just about every time. It’s not solely about avoiding being shot; it’s about avoiding any kind of escalation of trouble, whether a summons, an arrest, or anything. Nevertheless, one could easily get huffy about being asked what one is doing, on a public street, causing no harm to anyone. Carrying I.D. is not required when out in public in the United States of America ( “I don’t need no stinkin’ passport”: more Masked and Anonymous), and long may that be so. You could get on your high horse and force the police to decide whether to arrest you (for what?) or whether to let it go.

Or you can take another tack. You can be empathetic to the young police officer who is doing a job and is responding to some kind of report that has to be investigated. You can choose to make things easy for that officer instead of hard. That is apparently what Dylan did.

We’re not all Bob Dylan, of-course. And we’re not all Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. All such situations are somewhat different. But the larger lesson, as always, remains this, I do believe:

Keep a good head, and always carry a light bulb.

…

And then there’s this:

In Long Branch that’s just the way things go.
If you’re white you might as well not show up on the street
‘Less you wanna draw the heat.

…

Addendum: A lot more details on this in a story by Chris Francescani at ABC, in which the police officer concerned speaks for herself. She maintains she knew who Bob Dylan was, in general terms, but didn’t believe that this guy was Bob Dylan. It’s quite hilarious.

Following her police training, [Officer Kristie] Buble said she indulged him.

“OK Bob, why don’t you get in the car and we’ll drive to the hotel and go verify this?’ ” she said she told him. “I put him in the back of the car. To be honest with you, I didn’t really believe this was Bob Dylan. It never crossed my mind that this could really be him.”

Buble made small talk on the ride to the hotel, asking her detainee where he was playing, she said, but never really believing a word he said.

“He was really nice, though, and he said he understood why I had to verify his identity and why I couldn’t let him go,” Buble said. “He asked me if I could drive him back to the neighborhood when I verified who he was, which made me even more suspicious.

“I pulled into the parking lot,” she said, “and sure enough there were these enormous tour buses, and I thought, ‘Whoa.’”

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