Bob Dylan vs. New Jersey cops

Does Dylan’s detention, for walking around a Long Branch neighborhood, tell us anything broader about U.S. society?

"Oops," said Lauren Viera in the Chicago Tribune. Police in Long Branch, N.J., briefly detained Bob Dylan after rookie cops failed to recognize the music legend, and he didn’t have ID. In fairness to the 22-year-old officer who answered the call about an “eccentric-looking old man” wandering around looking lost, “it was pouring rain," and Dylan did look haggard. But it can’t look good treating Dylan like “a complete unknown.”

News reports are focusing on “the ‘ha ha, they didn’t know it was Dylan!’ aspect” of the incident, said Steven L. Taylor in PoliBlog, but the “real story” is that “a man can’t go for a walk in broad daylight” without ID. Dylan was cooperative and polite, but he wasn’t breaking any law, and this isn’t a police state. As Radley Balko notes in Reason, “I just don’t see the punchline.”

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